Rodriguez up for closing number
RED SOX BEAT Scott Lauber
TORONTO — Nine nights after David Ortiz’ milestone moment at Tropicana Field, the Red Sox are poised to begin their final homestand of the season with a pregame ceremony to honor the newest member of the 500 Home Run Club.
Swell. But there’s a better reason to watch tonight.
Eduardo Rodriguez will take the mound for the series opener against the Tampa Bay Rays, and it figures to be the last time he will pitch at Fenway Park this season. Mindful of the prized 22-year-old lefty’s workload in his rookie season, the Sox are limiting his usage. After tonight, he will make only one more start — and likely not until next week at Yankee Stadium — even though everyone in the pitchingstarved organization can’t get enough of him.
Consider the reaction of president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski upon seeing Rodriguez mow down the Cleveland Indians on the night the Sox announced they were hiring him as their new president of baseball operations.
“I joked with (manager) John Farrell when I talked to him, ‘Gee, it looks like we’ll win a lot of games when we throw Rodriguez in 162,’ ” Dombrowski said at his introductory press conference last month. “I don’t mean that as anything about any of the other pitchers, but he’s got a chance to be a No. 1 type of pitcher.”
Since then, nothing has happened to change Dombrowski’s first impression. If anything, it has only been strengthened by a five-start stretch in which Rodriguez has posted a 1.72 ERA and allowed 33 hits in 311⁄ innings
3 with 26 strikeouts and seven walks.
And if that’s not a large enough sample size for you to believe in Rodriguez’ topof-the-rotation potential, there’s always this: He has allowed no more than one run while pitching at least five innings in 11-of-19 starts since making his big league debut May 28 at Texas.
By comparison, both Miami Marlins phenom Jose Fernandez and New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom achieved that combination of results in nine of their first 19 starts en route to being crowned NL Rookie of the Year in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
“After the first time I pitched, I said, ‘OK, I can pitch here,’ ” Rodriguez said yesterday before the Red Sox beat the Blue Jays, 4-3, to win their second series against the AL East leaders this month. “For me, it’s been pretty good. All the times I get on the mound, when I throw bullpens, even if I sit in the dugout watching the game, I just try to learn because it’s my first time here. I just try to learn as much as I can to get ready for next year.”
If the Red Sox were in contention for a wild card spot, they would face a similar dilemma to the Mets with star righty Matt Harvey, whose innings are being watched in his first full season back from Tommy John elbow surgery. Instead, the Sox can do the right thing with Rodriguez by taking a cautious approach while still allowing him to take a semi-regular turn in the rotation through the end of the season.
Several years ago, longtime big league pitching coach Rick Peterson outlined for Sports Illustrated his philosophy that pitchers under age 25 shouldn’t increase their workload from the previous season by more than 25-30 innings in order to diminish their risk of injury.
The Red Sox came up with their own plan for Rodriguez. They used 145 innings, Rodriguez’ previous career high in 2013 in the Baltimore Orioles system, as the baseline and didn’t want to increase that number by more than 20 percent. But they also didn’t want to pull the plug on his season in early September.
So, following an Aug. 23 start against the Kansas City Royals that brought Rodriguez to 1402⁄ innings
3 between Triple A and the majors, they gave him seven days off before his next start and capped him at five innings Aug. 31 against the New York Yankees. He made his next start five days later and went seven innings to beat the Philadelphia Phillies, but got seven days off before giving up one run in 51⁄ innings last Monday in
3 Baltimore. He will have had six days off before tonight’s start, and seven or eight days before his next, and last, one.
Add it all up, and Rodriguez likely will finish in the range of 168-172 innings, right in line with the desired 20 percent increase.
“People that are a lot smarter than I am have looked at that and understand it and know the value of it, limiting those (innings),” interim manager Torey Lovullo said. “I know it has been added up and it has all been considered. We know long innings are very taxing. We know the up-and-down moments (between innings) are very taxing. The total pitches thrown are very taxing as well. His body is doing fine — his shoulder, his mind, everything is doing fine. Adding all those components together, we felt like a couple more starts would be his limit.”
Indeed, when you have an asset as talented as Rodriguez, it only makes sense to do everything possible to protect it. Take a good look, then, when he takes the mound tonight at Fenway, and then just wait ’til next year.