The Detroit Tigers have been suffering from a struggling bullpen for the better part of the last decade, and after Francisco Rodriguez blew his third and fourth saves of the season over the weekend, where the team turns now is anybody’s guess.
It’s not like anyone could predict that Rodriguez’s fall from grace would be so dramatic, but it was far from surprising.
Rodriguez throws an 89 mile-per-hour fastball on his best night. His secondary pitch is an 85 mile-per-hour change up. That was never going to be good enough. It was something the Tigers could put off until it came back to bite them, as Rodriguez escaped jam after jam in the early part of the season.