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Dereck Rodríguez will try and prove that ERA still matters

Delving into Dereck Rodríguez’s Fangraphs page is the baseball equivalent of ardently writing in your diary. It invites you - forces you, even - to be honest with yourself about your feelings, your values, and your purest baseball philosophies.

Do you see a player who provided great value to a struggling franchise, as evidenced by the rotation-leading 2.81 ERA? Damn the peripherals, what actually happened was good, was mighty, was valuable. In an era of predictive modeling, World Series trophies are still descriptive, after all.

Or do you see a player whose ERA looks like his xFIP cleaned out the fridge, hired a personal trainer, spent half their paycheck on an Equinox membership, and hit the gym twice a day for a few years?