Davidoff: Dependable Rivera least of Yankees' worries

Randy Choate brought himself back to Legends Field, during spring training 2002. The Yankees were coming off Luis Gonzalez's season-ending, broken-bat single off Mariano Rivera in the previous World Series, and Rivera found himself as a fan target.

"Somebody came down to the bullpen and yelled, 'Hey, I lost a lot of money on you last year!' " the former Yankee Choate, now with the Tampa Bay Rays, recalled. "[Rivera] was like, 'Well, you shouldn't have bet anything.' "

"He shouldn't have bet," Rivera affirmed Wednesday, remembering the exchange with a smile. "It's what it is. I wish I could control that. Even when you're at your best, it's not going to happen sometimes."

And that should pretty much answer your question whether the Yankees' legendary closer is concerned about his recent stretch of pitching. As long as he's healthy - and he insists he is - he'll shrug it off and prepare for his 15th postseason.

"I'm feeling OK. I'm OK," Rivera said before the Yankees' game against Tampa Bay at Yankee Stadium. "You go through a period like that. Every year, you go through a period like that. So sometimes early, sometimes late.

"Better it happens now than later. I don't worry about that."

Rivera threw two innings Sept. 10 in the Yankees' 6-5, 13-inning loss to Texas, and Joe Girardi raised eyebrows by throwing Rivera the subsequent night. In five appearances starting with Sept. 11, he has blown two saves (accounting for half of his season total) and allowed four runs in 41/3 innings.

Opponents have a .368 on-base percentage and .478 slugging percentage against him; those numbers stand at .242 and .256 for the season.

"Mo's Mo," Yankees pitching coach Dave Eiland said. "He's the least of my concerns."

Eiland, who is generally forthcoming about pitchers' shortcomings, insisted he didn't see much of anything of note in Rivera's recent outings. Baltimore's Luke Scott hit a ninth-inning, tying homer Sunday on a cutter that would get him out "nine out of 10 times," Eiland opined.

"It just happens," Rivera said. "I don't think it's mechanical at all."

So Rivera and the Yankees plan ahead. Every pitcher has input in his schedule leading up to the American League Division Series, but Eiland concedes that he lets Rivera have more say than most. With 11 games left, including last night's rain-delayed affair, we can probably expect to see Rivera in five of them.

"It's a different game once the playoffs start," Rivera said. "Definitely. That adrenaline starts kicking in."

And somehow, the normally placid Rivera manages to use that adrenaline to pitch virtually the same in the October pressure. In the regular season, he entered last night's action with 558 saves in 624 opportunities, an 89.4 percent success rate. In the playoffs, he's 39-for-44, an 88.6 percentage.

Even as a young pitcher, Rivera said, he never let the disappointments linger. He reacted no differently to Sandy Alomar Jr.'s series-turning homer in 1997 than he did to Gonzalez in 2001, or the Red Sox's memorable rally in 2004.

"I knew that as a young boy," he said. "All you have control over is your effort."

"From what I remember, he thinks, 'The man upstairs has blessed us so many times. Sometimes you're gonna blow a save,' " Choate said.

He hasn't blown one in the postseason since Game 5 of the 2004 American League Championship Series, a run of seven straight. Last year, you might recall, the other seven playoff teams' closers either blew a save or lost a game. Rivera stood as the survivor, again.

So sure, you can be concerned if you want with Rivera's recent results. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a more appealing October bet.