XM MLB Chat: "Total Save Stat" --I thought they said it ruined the game?

XM played a recorded piece done by Joe Castellano on the Angels. In the opening he excitedly touted Francisco Rodriguez--and who wouldn't? The superlative he chose to set K-rod apart from the rest? The "total save" stat, saying he had the "most total saves over the past 3 years," at which point I had to turn off the radio. Media guys are not consistent, therefore not believable. I posted Joe Castellano's feelings about relievers' stats a year ago. He expressed different feelings at that time, very emotional ones.

My comments on Castellano on XM Jan. 6, 2007 on this blog:

"I thought Castellano was going to cry last night (1/5/07) referring to a NY Post article from January 2006, which he said he clipped and has saved ever since. Choking back his emotions, he reads parts of it.

He treats the words (Gossage's in the Kevin Kernan article) like they are definitive proof that Rivera is inferior, triumphantly offering some stats supposedly making Gossage sound much better.

One of them was about number of hits given up, but I looked up hits/9, BB/9, and WHIP, regular season only (not even including Mariano's 112.2 post season IP), and none of them made Gossage look better. I believe Joe referred to Mo's 7.05 Hits/9IP like it was something bad, but Goose had 7.45 Hits/9IP, so his point caves in.

I had to turn off Joe, who may be a very nice person, but this anti-Mo stuff never ends. I spent about 2 hours today trying to get a copy of Kernan's article, and was able to get the first paragraph, but not the stats Joe spoke of."...

(Now referring to Sat. 1/6/07 programming):

..."Then, an hour later I turn on XM again and get a replay of Joe doing the Goose Gossage interview.
Within a few seconds, Joe dumps on Mariano, inviting Goose to do the same (saying people "like him" who are only 1 inning pitchers, throaty laugh heh heh, except once in awhile, but you know Goose you were so much more..).
Goose says to Joe, yes, you know, "they gave me The Cy Young or the Fireman's Award in 1975," etc. Joe doesn't draw any distinction between the 2. Soon thereafter, Mark Gray comes back on the air cutting out of the replay of the interview, and he references no distinction either. (After about a minute, I had to turn it off again).

I looked it up, and I find Gossage has never won the Cy Young Award, but did in fact win the Fireman's Award twice, in 1975 and 1978 from the Sporting News.
Mariano Rivera has won it 5 times. The Sporting News changed the name of the award to "Reliever of the Year Award" as of 2000.

Gossage is widely quoted saying he doesn't want to be lumped with Eckersley or with today's player Mariano Rivera (being that Goose feels he was much more than Mo. Did Gossage ever go 107 & 2/3 innings giving up only 1 HR as Mariano Rivera did in late inning relief in 1996? What about Gossage's post season and all star record under the brightest lights? Very poor).

Goose proved in the past that he's the powerful baseball media's dream by dumping on Mariano thusly:
"It's an insult to me to even be compared to Mariano Rivera, it really is," etc. This statement has appeared in hundreds of places, I got it from the Denver Post, 1/12/06. Since I'd lost interest in listening to questionable material, I don't know if he added this colorful prose to his XM radio interview.