Grayson Rodriguez 2024

[Jagwar]

9 hours ago, interloper said:

It was such a relief to see from him today after a kind of meh spring. Helps me feel a lot better about not having the original 1-2 of Burnes and Bradish.

 

9 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

I think GRod was always the 1-2.  No disrespect to Bradish but the ceiling for GRod is just higher. The stuff is just better.

I have a hunch that Tyler Wells is going to nudge into the conversation.   

[interloper]

2 hours ago, Jagwar said:

 

I have a hunch that Tyler Wells is going to nudge into the conversation.   

I'd love that. Wells is one of my favorite Orioles of this era. 

[Just Regular]

Grayson beat Strider in fastball velocity on Turn 1, but Bobby Miller, Jordan Hicks, Garrett Crochet and Jared Jones took the early Mount Rushmore readouts as top of the rotations are now mostly done.

Let's see who can keep it up for 3000 pitches.

Grayson and Jared Jones should be a very fun matchup leading off the Pittsburgh series Friday night.

[Tony-OH]

Rodriguez's changeup was literally a Bugs Bunny Change up.

I got an amazing 44% zcontact (Contact when batter swings at a ball in the strike zone) on the changeup.  Aaron Hicks had some of the ugliest swing that you will see from a major leaguer against the pitch. Really the fastball, changeup, curveball mix alone was dominant.

Here's a quick Reels I put together to show all of you changeup WHIFS, plus in the end I added in all 9 strikeouts, some of which are the same as before, but enjoy.

https://www.mlb.com/video/00u7jzgkdtP9kH55c356/reels/grayson-rodriguez-changeup-in-1st-start-of-2024?partnerId=web_multimedia-search_video-share

That cutter though! Yikes. 

[Sports Guy]

44 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Rodriguez's changeup was literally a Bugs Bunny Change up.

I got an amazing 44% zcontact (Contact when batter swings at a ball in the strike zone) on the changeup.  Aaron Hicks had some of the ugliest swing that you will see from a major leaguer against the pitch. Really the fastball, changeup, curveball mix alone was dominant.

Here's a quick Reels I put together to show all of you changeup WHIFS, plus in the end I added in all 9 strikeouts, some of which are the same as before, but enjoy.

https://www.mlb.com/video/00u7jzgkdtP9kH55c356/reels/grayson-rodriguez-changeup-in-1st-start-of-2024?partnerId=web_multimedia-search_video-share

That cutter though! Yikes. 

The 99MPH 2 seamer to Hicks on the outside corner was just gross. There is zero you can do with that.

[BRobinsonfan]

32 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

The 99MPH 2 seamer to Hicks on the outside corner was just gross. There is zero you can do with that.

Hicks looked completely lost in his at-bats against Rodriguez.   

[RZNJ]

4 minutes ago, BRobinsonfan said:

Hicks looked completely lost in his at-bats against Rodriguez.   

According to Baseball Savant, Hicks has seen 37 pitches against Oriole pitching.  13 changeups and only 7 four seam fastballs.   I think they noticed something last year.

[Say O!]

Beyond pure stuff, I loved GRods demeanor on the mound yesterday. He visibly was trying to punch guys out, was pissed when hung slider for HR, and just looked like a badass walking off mound in between innings (he hardly would acknowledge Adley giddiness).  
 

In Roch’s postgame blog, GRod mentioned how Burnes was pushing him competitively (love this).

Quote

I think there's a lot of friendly competition there," Rodriguez said. "He was talking some smack to me after the game, so I like that. That's gonna help me tremendously. I think this rotation, we're going to be very competitive with each other and we're gonna hold each other to high standards.

 

[interloper]

2 minutes ago, Say O! said:

Beyond pure stuff, I loved GRods demeanor on the mound yesterday. He visibly was trying to punch guys out, was pissed when hung slider for HR, and just looked like a badass walking off mound in between innings (he hardly would acknowledge Adley giddiness).  
 

In Roch’s postgame blog, GRod mentioned how Burnes was pushing him competitively (love this).

 

Yeah he was angry out there, I love it. 

[Sports Guy]

 

[Jagwar]

4 hours ago, interloper said:

I'd love that. Wells is one of my favorite Orioles of this era. 

Not a good beginning for today, hopefully he settles in. 

[SilverRocket]

Curious what happened with the slider or cutter. Statcast lists them all as cutters now but I thought it showed some of them as sliders during the game. The velocity was more like last year's cutter (high 80s) than the low-80s slider he had. Either way, that pitch yesterday looked awful and got shelved after the Ward HR. The remaining three pitch mix was good enough.

The low-80s slider was a key pitch in the second half last year so I'm curious what happened with it.

[Just Regular]

If the weather and/or Hyde's rotation management cooperate, we may get Grayson and this guy Friday night.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-all-get-irresponsibly-excited-about-jared-jones/

His bonus was about half Grayson's, but Jones is a multi-million dollar high school RHP who hasn't had to give the surgeon anything yet.

Jones, Dax Fulton, Jared Kelley, Kyle Harrison, Nick Bitsko and Mick Abel were the top tier of US high school Arms coincidence put in the class of 2020.

[Frobby]

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/whats-sweeter-than-having-one-ace-having-two/

Szymborski: “ZiPS suggests an eight-year, $57 million contract to buy out two years of free agency, and I think given the upside, you can certainly go higher than that.”

[Say O!]

2 hours ago, Frobby said:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/whats-sweeter-than-having-one-ace-having-two/

Szymborski: “ZiPS suggests an eight-year, $57 million contract to buy out two years of free agency, and I think given the upside, you can certainly go higher than that.”

To me, ZIPs is low on GRod right now, evaluating him based on full 2023 and not 2H when he was a different GUY.  Even the 70% case table might be low at 3.6 WAR. Szymborski qualifies that saying

Quote

There’s a 30% chance that his projection next year will be as good as this or even better. A 3.6 WAR projection for a pitcher is nothing to scoff at; it would have ranked 11th in the ZiPS projections for pitchers this season.