As all Angels' fans, and most baseball fans, know Francisco Rodriguez (lovingly known as K-Rod since the Angels' 2002 World Series run) is on the verge of breaking Bobby Thigpen's 1990 single season saves record.

With a month and a half left in the regular season Frankie has already acrewed 46 saves, a number that anyone will concede is impressive. He has already become an All-Star this year, and many are arguing that he could win the American League Cy Young award.

But the numbers, and the acclaim are skewed. At least in this Angels' fan's opinon.

I would be the first to accept credit for Frankie, but to do so would be misleading and a disgrace to the game of baseball.

While K-Rod's number of saves is impressive one cannot help but be worried, and on the edge of their seat when he comes into a game. It would be reasonable to assume that there should be some level of confidence with a guy who has 46 saves as opposed to 5 blown ones, but (to put it nicely) everyone knows what they say about people who assume things.

Though Frankie has an impressive 55 strike outs in 50.3 innings pitched, he has also managed to walk 29 batters in that time. Perhaps more importantly is the fact that his individual numbers are not as good as they have been in the past, especially since his ERA is the highest it has been since his first full season in the majors in 2003. Additionally, he has already given up  more home runs this season (4) than he did in all of last year (3), while he has pitched exactly 17 innings less.

Even his individual numbers cannot express the duress that he puts on fans. Just this past Wednesday in a "crucial" (I say that with all sarcasm intended) game against the Mariners he blew a save. Blowing a save to the Red Sox is frustrating, but at least understandable. Yankees, the same. In fact any team is more understandable than the Mariners. A team that is 20 games back should in the same division should not be able to beat "baseball's best" closer. Plain and simple. Yet they did.

Furthermore, at least one of Frankie's "saves" was a single pitch. Thats right, one pitch. What happened to the days of 3 inning saves a la Sparky Lyle? That isn't to say baseball should revert to a two man rotation and the days of Cy Young himself, or even Firpo Marbury (baseball's first real reliever), but a one pitch save shouldn't count towards a record.

At the end of the day it comes down to the East Coast Media bias which is so prevelant throughout baseball. Because Frankie is hot he is shown on Baseball Tonight and SportsCenter, but his frequent inaccuracies are not highlighted in the same voluminous way. Frankie is truly a talent, but it is frustrating to see him be praised when he is consistantly walking batters and allowing hits- even if these do not result in losses.

Moreover, Francisco blew at least 3 saves for John Lackey in the 2007 season. The more wins would have made 22 total. 22 total wins coupled with a league leading 3.01 ERA and 179 strike outs would have placed him better than third in the American League Cy Young voting. It isn't his fault that the offense couldn't score him any runs last year (or earlier this year).

For those of you who are not Angels' fans, and love K-Rod... try watching him every night.

I finally found a few baseball books to immerse myself in for the rest of the summer.

I went with The Mick by Mickey Mantle and Phil Pepe. I've been dying to get my hands on a good Mantle biography, and hopefully this will give me some insight on his half of Martin-Mantle extravaganza that was the 1950's Yankees.

In the same vein I found a book about the 1961 season, specifically as it pertains to the Mantle-Maris relationship, which I find fascinating. I can't wait to read it, so that I may be able to give a better historical perspecive on the current relationship between Mike Napoli and Jeff Mathis who, while this is on a much smaller scale, have a similar relationship to the M&M boys.

I also picked up The Best Team Money Could Buy to get another perspective on the Bronx is Burning classic 1977 season, because, lets be honest, I can't get enough of Billy Martin and his antics. Also I find the idea of the first team to "buy" a World Series interesting, since I wasn't alive during a non-free agency era.

And lastly I bought The Bronx Zoo by Sparky Lyle. I think its a good idea to get away from the obvious 1941, 1951,1961, and 1977 seasons. And again, I can't get enough Billy Martin.

I can't wait to really dive into these, and I think (hope) that they will inspire some really interesting topics to write about.

P.S. Frankie Rodriguez is overrated.