Laurila on Grayson Rodriguez’s shoes

[Frobby]

Another bit from Laurila’s Sunday column:

Grayson Rodriguez toes the rubber in atypical fashion. The 22-year-old right-hander in the Baltimore Orioles system doesn’t take the mound wearing traditional baseball footwear. Instead, he wears basketball shoes with cleats attached to them.

“I prefer the basketball shoes, because they have a little bit flatter base and sole,” explained Rodriguez, who is widely regarded as the game’s best pitching prospect. “The more ground contact that your foot has, the more force and power you can create. A company called Custom Cleats makes them for me. You just send in basketball shoes, or whatever kind of shoes you want, and they’ll slap some spikes on the bottom and send them back. [Fellow Orioles pitching prospect] D.L. Hall gets them as well. ”

Rodriguez was wearing standard basketball shoes when he kicked a 40-yard field goal last month, with the video of his effort going viral. Making the left-footed boot even more impressive is that the Nacogdoches, Texas native doesn’t have a background as a kicker.

“I just started learning how to kick,” said Rodriguez, whose explanation exuded both confidence and humility. “I was just kind of messing around with it, and that was as far as I could go. I mean, there were a lot of kicks before that video that didn’t really even get off the ground. But could I [potentially become a bona fide place kicker]? I wouldn’t put it past me.”

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-notes-lets-look-at-adrian-beltre-brooks-robinson-and-graig-nettles/

[Just Regular]

I wonder if this guy gave him the idea for cross-training.    The Christian McCaffrey tackle highlight was new to me.