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The response for both the New York Yankees and the Texas Rangers after being spurned by Cliff Lee was to sign a left-handed middle reliever. The Rangers choice was a pitcher who, for a time, was as effective in small doses as Lee was in lengthier ones, 41-year-old Arthur Rhodes. He agreed to a deal with them Wednesday.

Rhodes was outstanding during his two-year stint with the Cincinnati Reds, posting an ERA of 2.41 over 108 1/3 innings. With the help of Baseball-Reference.com, we discovered that Rhodes is one of four pitchers with back-to-back seasons of an ERA+ of 170 or better, with at least 50 innings pitched at the age of 39 or older.

Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhem had eight such seasons, including five in a row from 1964 to 1968. Roger Clemens did it in 2005 and 2006. Mariano Rivera matched Rhodes with a pair of remarkable seasons in 2009 and 2010.

Rhodes has earned the chance to stay in the majors because he is a high-level lefty specialist. Opposing left-handers have a career .281 opponents on-base percentage against him, which ranks fifth-best among active left-handed pitchers who have faced at least 500 lefties (58 left-handed pitchers qualify, including Billy Wagner, who ranks second and is expected to retire). That's one point better than the Yankees lefty reliever pickup, Pedro Feliciano.

Over the last three seasons, he's been even better, dropping that number to .236. The only active pitchers better in that span are Hong-Chih Kuo, Neftali Feliz, Mariano Rivera, and Billy Wagner.

Rhodes allowed his share of hits against lefties last season (.214 opponent batting average), but when those batters didn’t put the ball in play he was dominant, with 26 strikeouts and just one walk among the 89 lefties he faced.

He became the third pitcher over the last 35 seasons to strike out at least 25 left-handed batters while walking one or fewer. John Candelaria (34 strikeouts, no walks in 1985) and Dontrelle Willis (51 strikeouts, and only one walk in 2005) are the other two.

Rhodes tied a major league record with 33 consecutive scoreless appearances in 2010, matching a mark shared by Mike Myers (2000 Rockies) and Mark Guthrie (2002 Mets). But after that streak ended (June 28th), he wasn't the same pitcher.

The issue that Rhodes had once his scoreless streak ended was with his effectiveness against left-handed hitters. He allowed only one extra-base hit to the first 42 lefties he faced, but eight against the next 48.

The problem pitch was his slider. Rhodes' allowed only one extra-base hit with his slider to a lefty through June 28, but yielded two doubles and two home runs (including a walk-off to Phillies slugger Ryan Howard) to left-handed hitters with his slider after that. The issues with his slider made his fastball more hittable, and his performance with that pitch suffered as well.

The Rangers hope that Rhodes still has his best stuff. He closed the regular season with eight scoreless outings in his last nine appearances, stranding all four baserunners he inherited.

He'll also be able to impart a fair share of wisdom on the Rangers youngsters, such as Feliz, who could be making the conversion from reliever to starter. Rhodes, old enough to have pitched a shutout at Yankee Stadium in 1992 can speak well of that. He was starting games in the big leagues when Feliz was just three years old.

A capsule stat-based preview of the Reds-Phillies NLDS matchup

Top things to know
This series will be a matchup of strength vs. strength. The Phillies’ starting pitchers led the majors in innings pitched and were fourth in ERA at 3.55. They helped cover for a bullpen that was 18th in ERA (4.02).

The Reds led the National League in hitting (.272) and slugging (.436), and were second in OBP (.338). MVP candidate Joey Votto led the league in OBP, slugging and adjusted OPS+ and was second in the NL in offensive WAR, setting career highs in every offensive category.

Deciding factor
Phillies pitchers had the second lowest walk rate in the major leagues (6.8 pct), and the three pitchers the Reds will see most -- Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels -- walk hitters with even less frequency. And they come after you right away -- the Phils were third in baseball in first-pitch strike percentage and in the top 10 in percent of pitches thrown in the strike zone.

The Reds hitters, for all their success, are an aggressive bunch -- their swing percentage of 47.0 led the National League and was fourth in the majors. And Cincinnati is second in swing percentage and fourth in chase percentage on the first pitch.

Most interesting matchups
The Phillies will have three lefties in the 3-through-6 spots in their lineup and the Reds have veteran Arthur Rhodes and hard-throwing phenom Aroldis Chapman to counter. Chapman has never faced Philadelphia, but the middle of the Philly order has had some success against Rhodes: Chase Utley is 1-8 with two strikeouts, but Ryan Howard and Raul Ibanez are 6-19 (.316) combined. Don't forget July 9, when Rhodes allowed a leadoff double to Ibanez and a walk-off HR to Howard in an 11-inning Phils win. And keep in mind that Jayson Werth, the righty who will be mixed in with those lefties, has three walks in six career PA against Rhodes.

And Cincinnati has two lefty sluggers in the middle of their lineup that the Phillies will need to neutralize. Lefty J.C. Romero lowered his opponents’ BA against left-handed hitters almost 100 points from last season, but Votto is 2-3 against Romero. Plus, Jay Bruce tied for fourth in the majors this season (with Howard, among others) with 12 HR against lefties. But the Phils can also trot out Ryan Madson -- lefties hit only nine points higher than righties this season against him, and Bruce and Votto are 0-6 in their careers against the setup man. Keep in mind that righty Drew Stubbs hit 10 HR against left-handed pitching, just two behind his teammate Bruce.

Statistical secrets
Carlos Ruiz finished the season hitting .302, becoming just the fourth Phillies catcher since 1901 to finish the season over .300 (min. 400 PA). In the ninth inning or later, he hit a whopping .359 and slugged .692 (5th in MLB, min. 40 PA). Of course Joey Votto is one of the players ahead of him in both categories, hitting .415 and slugging .717. Ruiz’s nine extra-base hits after the eighth inning were fifth best in baseball.

Also, the Phillies' three starting pitchers in this series all get groundballs at rates above the MLB average, especially Halladay. To go along with that, according to Fangraphs, the Phillies boast the fifth and sixth best players in baseball in Double Play Runs Above Average: Placido Polanco and Chase Utley, respectively.

SIG's Picks
Albert Larcada of ESPN Stats & Info did statistical analysis of the last 10 postseasons, looking for the factors that most separate winning and losing teams. He found three -- power hitting, front-end starting pitching and the ability to turn batted balls into outs. Using his findings, he was able to make a projection.

Larcada’s system gives the Phillies a 55.7 percent chance to beat the Reds, the fourth-highest percentage of the eight postseason teams.

Quick Hits: With less than a week before All-Star voting closes, let’s take a look at some players having historic first halves to the season. Can they keep up the pace going into the break?

• Arthur Rhodes’ 0.24 ERA would be the second lowest going into the break (min. 30 IP) over the last 50 years. In 1989, Bill Landrum took a 0.23 ERA into the break for the Pirates (but was not an NL All-Star), before finishing the season at 1.69.
• Likely to make three more starts before the break, Ubaldo Jimenez (13-1) has a shot at being the first pitcher with 16 wins before the break since Wilbur Wood (16-11) in 1974 for the White Sox. However, Wood did it in 27 starts, whereas Jimenez will have only made 18. The last pitcher to win 15 before the break was David Wells in 2000.
• Jaime Garcia’s 1.79 ERA would be the lowest at the break for a qualifying rookie since Mark Fidrych’s 1.78 in 1976. He started the All-Star Game for the AL that season.
• If he gets enough plate appearances to qualify, Brennan Boesch’s .346 batting average would be the highest for a rookie at the break in the last 50 years. In 2001, Ichiro Suzuki found himself at .345 going into the All-Star Game.
• Cliff Lee has issued just four walks in 86.2 innings, a rate of 0.42 per nine innings. Only one starter has had a lower rate going into the break over the last 50 years. In 2005, Carlos Silva walked only five in 114.2 innings, a rate of 0.39 per nine.
• Kenshin Kawakami (0-9) draws another start on Saturday. In 2007, Anthony Reyes went into the break at 0-10. The worst winless pre-break start over the last 50 years belongs to Anthony Young, who was 0-12 in 1993 for the Mets.
• The Orioles’ .278 winning percentage would be the fourth lowest at the break over the last 50 years, and the lowest since the 2003 Tigers (.272). The 1979 A’s hold the low-water mark over that span, having entered the break at 25-69 (.266).

Today’s Trivia: Over the last three seasons combined, who has the most home runs before the All-Star break?

Today’s Leaderboard: Roy Halladay takes the hill against the Blue Jays for the first time in his career today. Among players that started their career in the last 50 years, Halladay has the second best winning percentage before the All-Star break. Only Pedro Martinez has been more dominant. Halladay is 101-44 (.697) before the break, and just 55-38 (.591) after.

Key Matchups: Aaron Rowand has only started four of the Giants’ last 11 games, but you can bet that he will be penciled in on Friday. Quite simply, no one mashes Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball like Rowand, who is 11-for-17 with four home runs and eight RBI in his career against the veteran. That’s the highest average for anyone who has faced Wakefield at least 15 times. This would be their first regular season meeting since 2006.

In four of the first five games that he faced CC Sabathia, Manny Ramirez hit a home run. He’s homerless in two meetings since, but has a .571 career average against the big lefty. Only Jermaine Dye and Alfonso Soriano have more career homers against Sabathia, but among those with 15 plate appearances, no one tops Manny’s 1.894 OPS.

Trivia Answer: Since 2008, Adam Dunn’s 66 home runs before the All-Star break are the most in the majors. He has one more than Albert Pujols and two more than Ryan Howard.

This week on the TMI Power Poll we look at middle relievers. It was the most hotly contested Power Poll yet, with six different guys receiving at least one first-place vote.

Other notable courtesy of Baseball Tonight researcher Mark Simon:
Todd Coffey - Nobody in MLB sprints from bullpen faster

Also receiving votes: Neftali Feliz, Dan Wheeler, Sergio Romo, Jeremy Affeldt, Manny Corpas, Pedro Feliciano, Brad Ziegler, Darren Oliver, Mike Wuertz, Carlos Villanueva, Hisanori Takahashi, Kevin Jepsen, Peter Moylan, Grant Balfour, J.P. Howell, Hideki Okajima, Hong-Chih Kuo, Shawn Camp, Nick Masset, Kris Medlan, Rafael Betancourt, Darren O'Day, Alfredo Aceves, Tim Byrdak, Todd Coffey, Sergio Santos, Takashi Saito, Ramon Troncoso