Grayson Rodriguez: Dominant Pitch Mix Strikeout Phenom
Transcript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:03 Talking about Grayson Rodriguez, 172.5 is the number.
00:07 Now this is a guy that had a 12.8K per nine in the minors.
00:10 I mean, I think he could be a 10, 11K per nine kind of guy,
00:14 but to me it's about the pitch mix.
00:16 He's got a cutter that he only uses about 6% of the time,
00:19 but Joe, as you know, each strike counts.
00:21 A five pitch mix on a young pitcher,
00:24 172 is a high number I think.
00:26 Will the O's turn them loose
00:28 or will they monitor the workload?
00:30 And again, depending on how good this bullpen can be.
00:33 Well, look, I don't think the workload's a concern at all.
00:35 I mean, he only had 122 innings
00:37 and that was in the big leagues,
00:38 but he did go back to the minor leagues
00:39 if everyone remembers too and made some starts there.
00:41 So I don't think 160 innings is a problem at all
00:45 for Grayson Rodriguez.
00:46 And the last 76 innings of his 2023 campaign,
00:50 he had a 2.580, all right.
00:51 He was a dominant pitcher.
00:52 And as you mentioned, in the minor leagues,
00:54 a very high strikeout rate.
00:56 This season's gonna go only one or two ways
00:58 for Grayson Rodriguez.
00:59 It's either going to be the up and down peaks and valleys
01:02 that we saw last year,
01:03 which we see sometimes out of young pitchers,
01:05 or it's going to go to the moon.
01:08 I'm betting onto the moon
01:09 when it comes to Grayson Rodriguez,
01:10 because I think this kid is that good.
01:12 I think he got that first taste of major league baseball.
01:15 He made the adjustments, he came back.
01:17 And if it were 20 innings, maybe I'd be less bullish.
01:20 But it was 76 innings that he was at a 2.580 RA.
01:23 I mean, that's not good.
01:25 That's dominant, okay.
01:26 When you have a sub three RA,
01:27 especially pitching in the American League East,
01:29 in some of those ballparks that we're talking about,
01:31 going against Yankee lineups and Red Sox lineups
01:34 and Toronto Blue Jays lineup.
01:35 I mean, look, to me,
01:37 this is a kid that is ready to be at the front.
01:39 And I think that Corbin Burns addition to that rotation
01:41 takes a huge relief off his shoulders,
01:43 where he doesn't have to be the guy at 20 something years old.
01:46 He can be the guy that, you know,
01:48 just kind of sits back, is the number two in this rotation.
01:50 You can learn from Corbin Burns
01:52 and also just not have that pressure of carrying the staff.
01:55 'Cause I think with some of the injuries
01:56 we've seen early on to this Orioles rotation,
01:58 that is certainly a concern potentially.
02:00 But Grayson Rodriguez, I'm gonna bet to the moon.
02:02 I'm gonna bet the over right now,
02:04 that number is at 174 on the projections.
02:07 So it's a slight over already on projections.
02:09 And I think that's just scratching the surface
02:10 of Grayson Rodriguez.
02:12 (upbeat music)
02:14 (bells chiming)