Following baseball away from New York City is usually an exercise in irrational hatred. The Yankees are aggressively good. Year after year, those assholes swoop in and pick up the most talented free agents on the market, gratuitously overpaying because they’re the Yankees and it doesn’t matter if you pay Alex Rodriguez $30 million a year even if he can barely play 120 games a year.
But as any diehard Yanks fan will tell you their resurgence in the mid-90s wasn’t tied to a bunch of high-priced free agent acquisitions. It was thanks to the arrival of the “Core Four”, the nickname bestowed to Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Mariano Rivera.
While Posada has become a walking corpse, Jeter has lost the defense and speed that made him great and Pettitte has retired, Mariano Rivera continues to dominate. This week he became baseball’s all-time leader in saves, just another feather in an illustrious career.
At the age of 41, Rivera probably should have slowed down at least a little bit. But his fastball velocity remains constant at 91-92 mph. Checking out his Baseball-Reference page is basically the equivalent of sports pornography. His ERA this season is 1.98. ERA last year? 1.80. The year before? 1.76.
You have to back to 2007 to find a down year for Rivera, where he posted a 3.15 ERA. Of course, 2007 is the only year since he became full-time closer for the Yankees that his ERA rose that high. Nine times he’s posted an ERA below 2.00 and of course his prowess in the postseason is absolutely unmatched.
No one else has more saves or a lower ERA in the months of October and November. Rivera quietly excels year after year at a position that’s riddled with high turnover for almost every other team in the league.
As most baseball fans realize by now, the secret to Rivera’s longevity and deadliness is his signature cut fastball, literally the only pitch he’s thrown for years.
The cutter is the stuff of legends, something discovered purely by accident or, according to him, through divine intervention during a game of catch. It breaks more bats than a roster with Carlos Zambrano and Milton Bradley and has such late movement he has little problem with consistently throwing strikes. However, a proper visual aid is needed to really grasp why his cutter is so effective.
Through all of the success, both in the regular and postseason Rivera has exuded a calm demeanor that doesn’t jive with the common emotional state of a closer. People expect relievers to be high-wire acts, toeing the line between erratic and dominant during every at-bat. But Rivera has the same expression whether he’s pitching to the Orioles in a May game or against the Red Sox in the postseason.
It’s his tireless work ethic and commitment to his craft that’s allowed Rivera to avoid any major setbacks or injuries in such a long career. As much as I despise the Yankees and all the hoopla and arrogance that comes with the franchise, it’s hard to find a reason to dislike Rivera.
(photo: ESPN)
