Oh no, it can't be!

A night when Mando nails down a 1-2-3 save, right through the heart of the Dodgers no less, seems like a perfect time to remind everyone just how bad he is right now.

A lot of the problem has been that he straight up isn't doing the job of a closer. He's only closing out two out of three saves. And when many people off the street could do your job 80% of the time (Walker, I'm looking at you), two out of three sucks it dry.

His 2.11 ERA looks great, so why does he suck so hard? Not that far below the surface lurks the evil peripherals, those nasty things that actual show how good a pitcure is. Damn them. ESPN's little closer report is actually good when trying to compare the susposedly elite reliever, or at lleast the other guys doing Mando's job in the league.

Strikeouts are normally important to a reliever's success. Mando has a K/9 of 6.64 right now, which puts him in the bottom of the closer list, but close to Mariano Rivera's 6.60. So why does Rivera close out 90% of his saves and Mando doesn't?

The next stop is strikeouts per walk. Now Mando can't even see Rivera, mostly because Mando has buried himself at the bottom of the list. That's dead last of the 32 teams and their 32 closers. Worse than Travis Harper, Joe Borowski and anyone else who decides to show up. At 1.25, its almost a walk for every strikeout. At the top of the list is Joe Nathan, at 10.00. And I'm not mentioning that because it's Joe Nathan, but because it shows there is someone pitching 10 times better than Mando right now.

And that leaves Mando with the second worst WHIP (1.62) of all closers, only behind the previously mentioned Harper, and the fourth-worst OPBA. SO how does Armando give up all these hits, have so many blown saves and keep his ERA so small?

Well, two of his 4 BS have been in relief of someone else. That means half of his BS ended up with no runs charged to himself, but he still got tagged with a blown save. Just once again proving that saves are completely meaningless. But I digress...

And that brings me to my conclusion. Armando is the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man. He is large, tubby and from far away looks like he will delight you and love your children. Up close he crushes you, your children and steps on churches.

Brian Sabean: I couldn't help it. It just popped IN there.
Lunatic Fringe: [angrily] What? What just popped in there?
Sabean: I... I... I tried to think...
Rich Draper: LOOK!
[they all look over one side of the roof]
Sabean: No! It CAN'T be!
Fringe: What is it?
Sabean: It CAN'T be!
Fringe: What did you do, Brian?
All -at-once: Oh, shit!
[they all see a giant cubic brown head topped with a baseball hat, Fringe looks at Sabean]
Sabean: [somberly] It's Armando Benitez.