Fernando Rodney still slinging baseballs and arrows for Diamondbacks

SCOTTSDALE – Arizona Diamondbacks’ pitcher Fernando Rodney eats healthy, preferring rice, beans, plantains and seafood to junk. He avoids soft drinks, instead he drinks water.

“No ice cream, no pizza, no Coca-Cola,” he said. “I got to keep my stomach in good shape.”

His dietary discipline has paid off. Rodney celebrates his 40th birthday in March and has spent 14 seasons in the major leagues as a relief pitcher, lighting up clubhouses with his humor and taking his trademark bow-and-arrow act after each save for seven different teams.

The Diamondbacks are his eighth stop, but he hasn’t broken out the bow-and-arrow at Salt River Fields yet.

“It’s there,” he said. “It’s coming.”

His face is new to the Diamondbacks franchise, but it is well known around baseball. Rodney was greeted in Arizona by past teammates, including Taijuan Walker, who shared the bullpen with him in Seattle in 2014.

“He’s been around the game for a long time, he’s had a lot of success,” Walker said “He’s a clubhouse guy. Every time, he comes in here laughing, joking around and having a good time.”

Rodney, a Dominican Republic native, is easy to pick out. He wears his cap with the bill spun to the left. It is a tribute to his father, Ulise, who died of cancer six days before Rodney made his Major League debut. A fisherman, Ulise wore his hat skewed sideways to block the sun while he was on the water.

Since making his major league debut with the Detroit Tigers in 2002, Rodney has combined work with fun. His approach will be the same in Arizona.

He impersonates roosters, dogs and Kermit the Frog.

“I try to put myself in a good position where everyone can understand me,” Rodney said. “Fun, that’s part of the game. It makes the job more easy.”

The Diamondbacks signed him to be their closer this season. And while he said he feels good enough to make 60 mound appearances if needed, he believes his job with the team includes more than closing games.

The years of traveling from one ball club to the next has exposed him to a lot of pitchers and a lot of approaches. He wants to use that experience to mentor the young pitchers on Arizona’s staff.

“I help them work on fundamentals like slider, fastball, location,” Rodney said. “Then I tell them: They call you to the bullpen, sometimes you can freeze. Maybe you don’t know what’s going on in the moment. You have to know who’s hitting, what pitch they’re looking for. So you have to be patient and focus.”

Rodney knows what he’s talking about. A three-time All-Star, he ranks fifth among active players in career saves with 261. Last season he posted a 3.44 ERA and 74 strikeouts with the Marlins and Padres.

Rodney is open to helping the young pitchers in the Diamondbacks bullpen because veteran pitchers did the same thing for him when he was finding his way in baseball.

“My first experience, the veteran guys talked to me and said the most important thing is throwing strikes — first pitch for a strike, you got to take advantage of it,” he said. “When you go down on the count early, hitters will take advantage of you.”

It stuck with him. And now he passes the lesson along.

“Strike one — down at the knees. That’s what he always tells me, every time I see him.” Walker said.

Rodney refers to himself as a “young 40-year-old,” but he can still remember the time he played the role of the rookie.

“The first night they called me up for a game in Minnesota,” Rodney said. “It was like, almost 400,000 people there, and I said ‘Wow that’s the big league.’ It’s like something you’ll never see in the minor leagues. They told me, ‘That’s the big leagues.’”