Grayson Rodriguez Expectations

[interloper]

The stuff looks kinda pedestrian. I'm just not seeing that wipe out stuff we were promised. Occasionally the change up dazzles. Fastball kinda sucks IMO. I dunno. I'm super down right now. 

[interloper]

59 minutes ago, interloper said:

The stuff looks kinda pedestrian. I'm just not seeing that wipe out stuff we were promised. Occasionally the change up dazzles. Fastball kinda sucks IMO. I dunno. I'm super down right now. 

@Sports GuyI see you laughing. Talk me off the ledge then. Show me why Grayson is a dude even though his statcast looks like a Cool Blue Gatorade. Or why everyone tees off on his supposedly great fastball. Or why he can't command his change or breaking pitches for squat. The best we can say is he had some gritty 5 innings starts where he pitched well against good teams. 

I mean, you see what I see right? His stuff doesn't look good. And his command looks worse. 

[oriole]

3 minutes ago, interloper said:

his statcast looks like a Cool Blue Gatorade

 

I gotta agree with you here. He doesn’t look like a top prospect. He’s still young and can definitely figure it out. Maybe I had unrealistic expectations but this is way out of the realm of just expecting too much. He’s not even replacement level. 
It’s too much to expect every prospect to pan out. But out of all the top prospects in this system, our only SP with a ceiling higher than mid-rotation is not the one I’d hoped to see fizzle out. You know they’re not gonna be spending on any decent free agents. And this team cannot be a true contender if the SP is going to be a balancing act between pedestrian and straight up bad.

[Surhoffan17]

If you remember, Bradish was getting lit up on his fastball, and he made improvements on it last year. But I do agree, the secondary stuff from Bradish always looked much better than anything I've seen out of Grayson so far, save for the occasional change up. 

[Frobby]

4 hours ago, Going Underground said:

Half his starts have been good and half have been bad. No rhyme or reason as to the quality of opponent. Pitched good against the Rangers and Braves Pitched bad against arguably the worst team ,the A's and one of the worst the Royals.Also pitched two good games against the Tigers  

 

The Orioles are 6-2 in games Rodriguez (2-1) has started this season, but his ERA is one of the worst among American League starters and his 1.73 WHIP is the worst among Baltimore starters. He pitched well against the Tampa Bay Rays last week, but that outing was sandwiched between his two worst this season, as he’s surrendered 16 runs in his past 12 2/3 innings.

Good synopsis.  It hasn’t all been good and it hasn’t all been bad.   Overall I’m disappointed, but it’s premature to send him back to AAA.

Unlike wildcard, I don’t want to baby him and hide him from Toronto.  He needs a chance to rise to the occasion.  He may fail, but he needs to learn how to bounce back after a crappy outing.   

[RZNJ]

Grayson says he’s going to learn a lot from this start.  My question to Grayson is this.  Didn’t you know that locating your pitches was the single most important thing long before last night’s start?

[Moose Milligan]

2 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Good synopsis.  It hasn’t all been good and it hasn’t all been bad.   Overall I’m disappointed, but it’s premature to send him back to AAA.

Unlike wildcard, I don’t want to baby him and hide him from Toronto.  He needs a chance to rise to the occasion.  He may fail, but he needs to learn how to bounce back after a crappy outing.   

I think it's a bit premature to send him back to AAA, too.  

But how long of a leash are you willing to give him?  Especially if Irvin keeps throwing well.  That's not to say that Irvin can't take someone else's place in the rotation but G-Rod can be a candidate for that, too.

[interloper]

6 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

Grayson says he’s going to learn a lot from this start.  My question to Grayson is this.  Didn’t you know that locating your pitches was the single most important thing long before last night’s start?

Right? What else can be learned? "Major leaguers will torch you if you fall behind too much". No s***. What he needs to learn is how to execute his pitches, whether it's a delivery thing or a release point or whatever. Throw strikes. Do what Tyler Wells does. Tired of the "learning". Go do it. 

Kevin Gausman's first 160 IP between his short 2013 and longer 2014 amounted to a 4.22 ERA. If you can't do better than Kevin Gausman on a team that is arguably better and in a ballpark that is now a pticher's park, then what are we doing here? Grayson should be far outclassing the likes of rookie Kevin Gausman, with all the tools at his disposal. Gausman famously said there was nothing like that when he pitched here. There are no more excuses. 

Edited May 16, 2023 by interloper

[Moose Milligan]

23 minutes ago, interloper said:

@Sports GuyI see you laughing. Talk me off the ledge then. Show me why Grayson is a dude even though his statcast looks like a Cool Blue Gatorade. Or why everyone tees off on his supposedly great fastball. Or why he can't command his change or breaking pitches for squat. The best we can say is he had some gritty 5 innings starts where he pitched well against good teams. 

I mean, you see what I see right? His stuff doesn't look good. And his command looks worse. 

I think this is a pretty fair assessment.

IMO, I don't think he repeats his delivery that well.  You can see it with the way that he finishes his delivery, it's not consistent every time.  Sometimes he finishes upright, swinging his leg around, other times he finishes more bent over the front leg.  

That's pretty troubling for someone who is that highly touted.  

[Frobby]

3 minutes ago, Moose Milligan said:

I think it's a bit premature to send him back to AAA, too.  

But how long of a leash are you willing to give him?  Especially if Irvin keeps throwing well.  That's not to say that Irvin can't take someone else's place in the rotation but G-Rod can be a candidate for that, too.

As I said elsewhere, I think 3 consecutive bad starts would get the O’s thinking about a reset.  

[interloper]

6 minutes ago, Frobby said:

As I said elsewhere, I think 3 consecutive bad starts would get the O’s thinking about a reset.  

And why wouldn't they when all the data supports the eye test? There's literally nothing encouraging other than 10 k/9, which, who cares how you're getting outs when you're getting lit up in between strikeouts and walking a bunch of guys. 

Edited May 16, 2023 by interloper

[Just Regular]

9 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

Grayson says he’s going to learn a lot from this start.  My question to Grayson is this.  Didn’t you know that locating your pitches was the single most important thing long before last night’s start?

Also, what did he learn last night that he didn't in Kansas City?

[Frobby]

12 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

Also, what did he learn last night that he didn't in Kansas City?

He’s not the first young pitcher who got thumped multiple times before learning how to avoid snowballing.  And, sometimez even good, experienced pitchers don’t have it on a given day.  Honestly, I think last night was one of those for Grayson.  He didn’t have the good, diving changeup that’s really his next pitch.  He didn’t have good command over anything really.  And, he started rushing his windup when things got tough.   

[Sports Guy]

46 minutes ago, interloper said:

@Sports GuyI see you laughing. Talk me off the ledge then. Show me why Grayson is a dude even though his statcast looks like a Cool Blue Gatorade. Or why everyone tees off on his supposedly great fastball. Or why he can't command his change or breaking pitches for squat. The best we can say is he had some gritty 5 innings starts where he pitched well against good teams. 

I mean, you see what I see right? His stuff doesn't look good. And his command looks worse. 

First of all, I was laughing because of the “I’m pretty down” comment. You are taking this stuff way too seriously if it’s making you feel down. I can see getting pissed or being excited in the moment but “I’m pretty down” seems to be a “time to take a step back” type thing.

As for his stuff, no I think you are completely wrong. Stuff+ shows his stuff to be very good and I see good stuff. What we don’t see is good command. That’s the issue now…command.

It has nothing to do with with whether his pitches are good enough.

Now, with that said (and I feel the same way about Bradish), I think he throws too many different pitches. I feel he needs to scrap 1-2 of his pitches and throw what he does best. These are coming up with 5 and 6 pitches and it’s just too much.  Master 2-3 pitches first and then you can expand things.

Overall, he is missing bats at about a league average rate for a starter. His str% is slightly below average but not egregiously so.

He has 2 big issues..too many baserunners (more worried about the walks) and too many homers allowed. He is leaving too many pitches over the plate. Solo homers don’t matter that much but when you are letting up almost 2 baserunners per inning, homers become a problem.

Talk of sending him down today is dumb imo. Like really really dumb.

But a few more bad starts like that one and it becomes a real discussion. He’s learning and I would prefer him to do it up here.  The team is 6-2 when he starts, so it’s not like he’s hurting the team, just like Gunnar hasn’t really been hurting the team overall.

It would be nice seeing him come up and perform better immediately but that doesn’t always happen. As fans, you just have to deal with it and the fans that booed him last night should be throat punched.

 

[Sports Guy]

I know they have been hitting him hard but the 380 BABiP is still unlucky and that won’t stay at that level.