Rodriguez almost didn’t arrive
In ’14, Dombrowski nearly detoured deal
BALTIMORE — Tonight, the Red Sox will watch the season debut of Eduardo Rodriguez, a pitcher whom president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski believes “has the potential to be a top of the rotation type of guy.”
“It’s like making a trade, really, to get a guy like that,” Dombrowski said yesterday from the Red Sox dugout in Camden Yards before a 7-2 victory over the Orioles in the opener of a four-game series.
As lucky as Dombrowski feels to be the benefactor of a trade made by former Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington, he was a quick trigger away from altering team history. As the Sox crumbled further into last place in July 2014, and began shopping Andrew Miller, Cherington asked Dombrowski, then the general manager of the Tigers, for two players for the reliever. Miller was a hot commodity that summer with 69 strikeouts and a 2.34 ERA in 42 innings.
Dombrowski told the Red Sox he’d only give up one of the players they asked for. No deal was made.
Then on July 31, Dombrowski changed his mind. “We thought we traded for him (Miller),” said Dombrowski, whose Tigers were 58-47 at the time. “We thought we had him. They were asking us for a couple of guys that we liked and we were willing to give them one of them. We wouldn’t give them two. “Finally, the last day, it was the same day we got David Price and we felt we were in position that we would give them what they wanted. We ended up giving them the two guys. We thought we had a deal.
“But at that point, (Cherington) says, ‘We’re not quite ready yet. We have one more phone call we have to make.’
“They got back to us and ended up trading with the Orioles for Eduardo Rodriguez.”
Dombrowski wasn’t angry about any of it.
“Really, when they got Eduardo Rodriguez, he was better than the guys we were offering. So I understood it,” he said. “But they had indicated they had been asking Baltimore for him for a while and they kept saying no. So they were really looking to get him.”
Equipped with a left arm that could throw in the high 90s and twirl a vicious changeup, Rodriguez was considered MLB’s 65thbest prospect by Baseball America when the Orioles sent him to the Red Sox. It was perceived by most as a coup for the Red Sox.
Dombrowski said it’s natural to wonder if the Orioles knew something about Rodriguez that the Red Sox did not.
“You should know more about your own players than others do,” Dombrowski said. “So sometimes when you see a guy you move that you’re not expecting, you say, ‘Gee, I wonder if they know something we don’t.’ But you also know in times like that, sometimes you have to step up.
“I think the general public probably asks that more than we do because sometimes there is this notion that is out there that you’re going to trade for somebody and not give anything up. That really doesn’t exist.”
If there was something glaring about Rodriguez that prompted the Orioles to trade a blue-chip prospect for a rental reliever, the Sox haven’t noticed it. Rodriguez is finally healthy after missing two months when he twisted a knee in a bizarre spring training incident in which the pitcher was trying to catch fly balls during batting practice.
Now the starting rotation, which ranks 22nd with a 4.68 ERA, is about to get some help from a 23-year-old left-handed starter who had a 3.85 ERA last year as a rookie.
“He has tremendous ability and great makeup,” Dombrowski said. “It’s unfortunate he got hurt this spring. Sometimes people look past that it’s a significant injury. We didn’t think he would be out this long either. He took a little bit longer to heal.
“But not only does he have the ability, he’s a hard worker and focused to be a championship type of guy.”