Eduardo Rodriguez Returns!
And the Red Sox win but whatever that happens every day now who cares
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The Red Sox got their Opening Day starter back! The current ace of the staff, not counting Chris Sale who is still injured and Pedro Martinez who will be coming through that door any day now, returned to start his first game of the year against Baltimore yesterday. So did it go well? Yes! It went well!
As you likely know if you’re reading this, Rodriguez was to be the Red Sox Opening Day starter, but suffered from either fatigue, some sort of minor injury, or a demonic possession, depending on your definition of the term “dead arm.” Regardless, Rodriguez was healthy enough to defeat the demons/come off the IL and start his first game of the young season yesterday.
So how’d he do? The results were pretty good. Five innings, three runs, seven Ks, no walks, although he did allow two homers. The Orioles lineup isn’t particularly deep so that played a part in things, but it was, at the very least, a good tune-up for future starts.
I went back and rewatched the start and Rodriguez started out pretty rusty in the first inning. He missed his location on a lot of pitches, and made some uncharacteristic non-competitive pitches in addition to more than a few right over the middle of the plate. Fortunately, the Orioles weren’t really able to take advantage of those right up until they did. Ryan Mountcastle, who has serious power, took an 0-2 fastball just up from the middle of the plate out over the right center field wall for a two run homer in the first inning. It was a disappointing pitch to make on an 0-2 count, but as I said, rusty. Later in the year Rodriguez likely doesn’t put that pitch in that location, but he hadn’t pitched since the end of the 2019 season. Think about it this way: the last time Rodriguez pitched, Alex Cora was the manager!
Velocity was about where you’d expect, 93-94 with the fastball, but the command was rough. After giving up the homer in the first, things didn’t start out a lot better in the second. Rodriguez hung a first pitch slider over the middle of the plate to second baseman Rio Ruiz, but Ruiz fouled it off.
Rodriguez started to settle in a bit later in the second inning, especially with the final at-bat of the frame against Cedric Mullins. For comparison’s sake, here is the pitch chart for Mullins’ first at-bat in the first inning, a line drive single to centerfield.
I think it’s fair to say none of those pitches were thrown where Rodriguez wanted them to go. Now, look at the chart of Mullins’ second at-bat in the second inning.
Rodriguez did a much better job here, keeping the ball away from Mullins and off the middle of the plate. This second at-bat resulted in Mullins grounding out to shortstop.
And since we’re so inexplicably focused on Cedric Mullins, check out Mullins’ third at-bat against Rodriguez.
All of those red pitches are changeups. They are the first, second, and third changeups that Mullins saw from Rodriguez that day, and you’ll note how each was progressively lower in the zone, until pitch 4 was actually below the zone. That’s the one Mullins swung at and missed. That, friends, is called command, the ability to locate pitches in the zone and, when necessary, out of the zone as well. Compare that to Mullins’ first plate appearance above.
So what did we learn? Health is a skill and so the fact that Rodriguez was on the mound and competing for five innings was itself a win. It almost didn’t matter what the results were. Except that the results did matter, perhaps even more now than later. We like to think of the games mattering more later in the season and less so at the beginning of the season, but really the most important games come when the team is competing for the playoffs. If the Red Sox are doing that later, those games will be more important, but that’s not a sure thing at the present time. This team is going to try to make a run towards the playoffs, but that’ll be hard if they fall in a standings pothole. They need to win right now to ensure the games later in the year matter.
To that end, Rodriguez was effective. He struggled a bit to command his fastball at the beginning of the start, but by the end his command had improved significantly. That’s not to say he’s fixed now, or something silly like that, but this was a get-the-rust-off kind of start and it looks like Rodriguez succeeded in accomplishing that task. He clearly has more to give and I anticipate he’ll get better as he gets deeper into the season. It’s hard to win twice in one day, but the Red Sox managed it with a win on the scoreboard and on the mound.
Let’s not set the bar too high. E-Rod hadn’t pitched in over a year. Couldn’t ask for more than he gave them. Now all we need is a Garrett Richards bounce-back