Repeating myself again, sometimes a save happens early.
Andruw Jones is the most dangerous hitter in their lineup. This was the point to take a chance and go to our best reliever and to get Jones out. The game would likely have ended before he came to bat again, one way or the other.
The idea of sometimes using Cordero "early" came to me in the Houston series. The top and middle of their lineup was killing us. Livan was pitching and #8, #9, #1 were due up in the sixth inning. #8 and the pinch hitter got on. The save in that game was the 6th inning because we were being killed by the people who were coming up. They scored two runs that inning and we ended up losing by 1.
This is probably too much "outside of the box" thinking for Frank, though.