As soon as this coming week, 26-year-old Francisco Rodriguez of the Los Angeles Angels, wunderkind of the 2002 playoffs and the American League’s career leader in strikeouts per inning, will become the first pitcher ever to save 60 games. Going into last night’s game against Seattle, he had 56 saves, one shy of the record Bobby Thigpen set with the Chicago White Sox in 1990. Thigpen set his record in the 159th game his team played that year; last night’s game was the Angels’ 146th. If things go just right, Rodriguez could conceivably end up banking his 65th save before the season is out.

No one reading this will be shocked by the idea that this is largely a function of opportunity. Just as a lot of the reason Carlos Delgado has been able to go on an absurd RBI spree in recent months is that he’s batted behind Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and David Wright, all of whom do a good job of getting on base, Rodriguez has structural factors to thank for the new and lucrative record he’s about to set.

The Angels have a so-so offense that rates 15th in the majors in runs scored per game, and very good pitching and defense, which ranks seventh in runs allowed per game. Because of the unbalanced schedule, they also play a disproportionate number of games against their AL West rivals Seattle and Oakland, teams with lousy offenses that play in good pitcher’s parks.

Add in the Angels’ long-standing emphasis on small-ball tactics and the league-wide decrease in scoring this year, and you have exactly the sort of relatively low-run environment in which you might expect to see a lot of tight games and so a lot of save chances. And this is what you have. As Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus noted in a column yesterday, Rodriguez isn’t only second on the single-season save list right now; he’s also second on the single-season save-opportunity list. Just as runs driven in are largely a measure of what your teammates do, so is the save.

This is where it’s fair to rail against the save as the single most ridiculous statistic in baseball, the one that does the most to mislead the public about how good players are. Among relievers with 50 innings pitched, one could note, Rodriguez doesn’t rate among the top 10 in strikeouts per inning, or the top 15 in batting average against, or the top 30 in base runners allowed per inning, or the top 40 in strikeout-to-walk ratio. He’s very good, but he’s demonstrably not the best reliever in baseball this year, let alone anywhere near having the best relief season ever.

While the disconnect between Rodriguez’s saves total and his actual play is pretty glaring, though, it’s easy to forget two things. First, he really is having a terrific season, if not a truly historical one. Second, the save is a popular statistic because, like the RBI, it serves as a broad proxy for something real that isn’t easily captured by other numbers.

Mets fans don’t get excited about Delgado’s year because he’s driven in nearly 80 runs since Willie Randolph was fired, but because they watch the games and they see him drive in huge run after huge run, day after day; his RBI totals are just a way of referencing the underlying reality that he’s been a beast in the clutch for months when it counted most. Similarly, as inflated as Rodriguez’s saves total may be by context, they point at something real, which is that he’s pitched in more important spots than anyone else and come through brilliantly.

Rodriguez’s win probability added — a measure that gives more credit for setting down the side in order in the ninth in a one-run game than for doing so in the seventh inning of a blowout — is fifth-best among relievers, at 3.86. This is all but tied with Mariano Rivera, whose ERA is a run better and who’s allowing a bit more than half as many base runners per inning, which essentially means that Rodriguez has been worth four more wins than he would have been had he pitched average ball in the exact game situations. Saves are a bad way of showing it, given their flaws, but the truth is that Rodriguez genuinely has been vastly more important to his team than numbers like strikeouts or batting average show, just as Delgado really has been more important than you could tell from his on-base or slugging averages.

What really matters, though, is that in both cases this value derives from context, which is very different from value deriving from innate excellence. Rodriguez may have been wonderful in the clutch so far this year, but playing well in the clutch isn’t really an inherent skill. Even if it were, it would be of dubious use — without save chances to give him this October, for instance, even magic Rodriguez talents would do the Angels no good. This last would be most worth keeping in mind for the Mets, or any other team tempted to solve a bullpen problem quickly this fall by helping Rodriguez to set another record, as the best-paid reliever in baseball. When a player’s value depends on what happens around him, it’s hard to say just what he’s worth at all.

tmarchman@nysun.com