What to expect from O's RHP Rodriguez (MLB No. 7) in bigs
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For as many ¡°ifs¡± as there¡¯s been with Grayson Rodriguez -- if he hadn¡¯t gotten hurt last year, he would have graduated to the big leagues long ago; if he had thrown more consistently during Spring Training, he¡¯d have made the Orioles' Opening Day roster -- we all knew it was a matter of when, not if, he¡¯d get called up to help out the big league rotation.
Maybe it wasn¡¯t clear it would be right now, in time to start Wednesday afternoon in Texas against the Rangers. But the O¡¯s needed to adjust their rotation due to Kyle Bradish¡¯s foot injury and with Rodriguez having thrown on Friday, pitching in Arlington -- only about a three-hour drive from Nacogdoches, Texas, where Rodriguez went to high school, by the way -- works out perfectly timing-wise.
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MLB Pipeline¡¯s No. 7 overall prospect, and No. 2 on the Orioles¡¯ Top 30, Rodriguez started out Grapefruit League action just fine, but ran into trouble as the spring wore on, especially as he started to face a lineup a second time. General manager Mike Elias said the future frontline starter had trouble establishing his slider and that his command clearly was not as sharp as it has been pretty much consistently throughout his career since the O¡¯s took him No. 11 overall in the 2018 MLB Draft.
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For those who want to worry too much about a small sample, the right-hander also struggled with the strike zone during his debut with Triple-A Norfolk on Friday. He gave up four walks and four hits that led to three runs (two earned) during his four innings of work, though it should be noted that rain wreaked a bit of havoc for both him and Rays top pitching prospect Taj Bradley.
The stuff is still very much there. Rodriguez was up to 99 mph early and averaged 96.6 mph with his fastball, according to Statcast. He got a good amount of called strikes and swings-and-misses with his curve (42 percent called strikes or whiffs), and his heater was effective in that regard as well (33 CSW%), even though he recorded just two strikeouts. His slider was not a weapon and his changeup, one of the best secondary offerings of any pitching prospect in baseball, was surprisingly ineffective.
What does all of this mean in terms of what to expect for his start on Wednesday? Very little. Between it being just one start and the wet conditions clearly an issue, let¡¯s throw that out the window. Except for a couple of things.
First, the stuff is still there. There could be cause for concern if the velocity had dipped for some reason, or he wasn¡¯t able to spin a breaking ball, or kill it with his changeup. All of that happened, albeit a bit more inconsistently for a guy who has a career 2.49 ERA, 12.8 K/9 and 3.1 BB/9 rates, 0.963 WHIP and .174 batting average against. In other words, this guy has a very strong track record of dominating hitters at every step of his climb to the big leagues, even if it was delayed by a lat injury in 2022.
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Does that mean he¡¯s going to completely shut down the Rangers in start No. 1? There¡¯s no guarantee, but that leads to the second point: When a pitcher has a legitimate four-pitch mix, like Rodriguez has, he can still have success even if one of his normally trusted weapons isn¡¯t working. Case in point: If he was still struggling to command his slider well, he can go to his ¡°fourth¡± pitch, the curve, and have success with it. Friday¡¯s outing may have been messy, but there¡¯s no doubt he took that away with him. And it¡¯s hard to imagine that 70-grade changeup not being there for him on a regular basis.
Assuming he has that off-speed offering, which he typically tunnels so well off of his well above-average fastball, going for him, and he can manage to stay within himself and not get too amped up (Easy to say from here to a 23-year old making his big league debut in his home state.), he¡¯s going to be just fine. Even if the slider is still hiding, his fastball-change-curve combo platter is plenty to give big league hitters fits.
It remains to be seen just how long of a stay in the big leagues Rodriguez has and trying to project what he¡¯s going to do in his first start isn¡¯t nearly as much fun as thinking about what he might do -- settle in pretty quickly as a frontline starter -- if he¡¯s given the opportunity to stick around.