Eduardo Rodriguez Providing Reason To Tune In To Red Sox
BOSTON (CBS) -- Admittedly, in the grand scheme of things, it's not much.
"It" came just shy of 9 p.m. on an altogether forgettable Tuesday night of baseball in Baltimore. And again, it wasn't much. But it was something.
Twenty-two-year-old left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez -- making his third career major league start, this one against the team that ditched him in exchange for the rental of a reliever last July -- had gotten himself into quite a pickle. In a scoreless game in the bottom of the fifth inning, Rodriguez allowed a leadoff single before hitting the next batter with a pitch. Rodriguez did induce soft contact to get Manny Machado to ground into a fielder's choice in the next at-bat, and Rodriguez's work to climb out of a hole for the third time of the evening began in earnest.
He started off Delmon Young with a ball before pounding the strike zone. Young went down swinging.
Up stepped Baltimore's best hitter in Adam Jones. Three pitches. Three strikes. Three outs.
Rodriguez, after working out of trouble with his 92nd pitch of the night, let a glimpse of his passion show through, pounding his glove and letting out a roar before making his way back to the visiting dugout. Jones, a man who's been praised this year by Jim Palmer for keeping his head down and never committing the cardinal baseball sin of displaying human emotions, apparently didn't like this burst from the rookie, and accordingly stared down the pitcher after the at-bat.
Jones -- who went 0-for-2 with a walk against Rodriguez -- may not have liked it, but he'll likely not soon forget this pitcher's name.
Jones, the four-time All-Star, struggled to give Rodriguez too much credit after the game.
"He came at me with his best, and I missed two pitches," Jones said, according to the Boston Herald. "He's got velocity. He beat me on that one. We won the game, though. He's got good [expletive]. He was in a big trade, so he had to be pretty good. He's, what, 23? Yeah, he's got good stuff. He's had, what, 3-4 starts up here now? I want to see him have 15-20, see how that continues to go. But he's got good stuff."
Again, in the prism of the full 162-game season, this was not much. The Red Sox ended up losing the game, surrendering the game's only run just three batters after Rodriguez left the game, dropping them into sole possession of last place in the AL East. Against their own division, they fell to 10-16. And if they can't beat the teams in baseball's worst division, who can they beat, really? (That's a rhetorical question, of course, because everybody knows the answer is that they can beat Oakland and Philadelphia, almost exclusively.)
The season may be heading nowhere. While some faithful fans still may be holding on to hope that things will somehow turn around, few would argue that the prospect of the 2015 season does not look encouraging.
Except, that is, for Rodriguez.
Without bombarding you with too many stats, take a gander at these bits of incredible information:
** The pure stats: Rodriguez has pitched 20.2 innings, and he's allowed just one run, which came on a solo homer. He has struck out 21 batters and walked seven. He's allowed just eight hits. He has a 0.44 ERA.
** Rodriguez is the first pitcher in the modern era (post-1912) to start a major league career with three starts in which he got through at least six innings while giving up one or fewer runs and three or fewer hits while also striking out at least seven batters. Again, he's the first pitcher in the past 100-plus years to start his career like this.
** I admittedly don't know the ins and outs of pitching WAR (it's kind of complicated), but, despite being on the team for just 20 percent of the season, he leads all Red Sox pitchers in WAR with 1.4. Among starters, Clay Buchholz is second with a 0.7 WAR despite pitching 50-plus more innings.
Any way you slice it, the kid is damn good. And he right now represents the brightest spot on a Red Sox team that desperately needs one.
Will he save the season? Well, that's hard to do when you pitch every fifth day. Is he going to eventually get hit hard and allow some runs? Of course. Is he the second coming of Pedro Martinez? Probably not ... but Pedro also posted a 5.40 ERA in his first three career starts.
While baseball fans in Boston might not have much to cling to at this moment, they at least have Rodriguez to look forward to every fifth day.
It's not much ... but it's something.
See you Sunday afternoon at Fenway. Maybe the Red Sox will even plate a run or two in support of their best pitcher.
Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here. You can email him or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.
