It’s already tough to stomach where the Boston Red Sox are, and where they likely are not going this season.
But imagining where the defending World Series champions would be without Eduardo Rodriguez? Now that’s a truly sickening thought.
Rodriguez held the Minnesota Twins scoreless over seven impressive innings Wednesday night, eventually picking up the win in his team’s 6-2 win at Fenway Park. The 26-year-old lefty improved to 17-5 to go along with a 3.81 ERA, both of which are the best among Red Sox starters. Rodriguez has been especially great lately, posting a 0.96 ERA over his last 56 1/3 innings.
Most importantly, Rodriguez continually puts his team in a position to win, and Boston usually responds. The Red Sox are 22-7 when Rodriguez starts but have a losing record this year when anybody else starts a game. Pitching win-loss records often are coincidental, but there’s nothing coincidental about Rodriguez has done this season.
There have been many great left-handed starters in the long history of the Red Sox — Chris Sale, David Price, Jon Lester, Bill Lee and Bruce Hearst, just to name a few. But if Rodriguez wins three more games, he’ll do something none of those players, and no Red Sox lefty since Mel Parnell in 1953, has done: win 20 games.
Yes, there were plenty of left-handed 20-game winners for the Red Sox before 1953, including some guy named Babe Ruth. But what Rodriguez is on the verge of doing this season nevertheless is worth celebrating.
Unsurprisingly, Rodriguez is on pace for a career season. He already has reached career-high totals in wins, starts (29), innings (172 2/3) and strikeouts (168). His career-best ERA is 3.82, a number he set last year in what most would agree was a far less impressive campaign.
But what changed for Rodriguez? How did he go from a frustrating, yet promising pitcher who seemed incapable of tapping into his vast potential to, arguably, the most reliable pitcher on Boston’s staff?
Injuries to Sale and Price certainly helped skew the perception in Rodriguez’s favor. But the truth is that the foundation for his emergence was laid in spring training, months after his on-mound meltdown in the Fall Classic.
“Fair or not, I was very hard on him in spring training, letting him know this is what we need from him,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said after Wednesday night’s game. “Potential is great, but there are a lot of people who just stay with that and they don’t take the next step. He took a challenge. He made some adjustments, and now he’s doing what he’s doing.”
Rodriguez has been heeding Cora’s advice, particularly as it pertains to nibbling around the strike zone, a habit he still hasn’t entirely shaken.
“This whole year (Cora’s) been telling me the whole time, ‘Go out there and attack hitters, try to get deep in the games, don’t get in deep counts,’ ” Rodriguez said. “It’s part of the job as a starting pitcher to go deep in the games.”
None of this is to say that Rodriguez has established himself as an ace, or that his breakout season should be considered a worthy consolation prize in what’s setting up to be a brutally disappointing year for the Red Sox. The truth is that Rodriguez still has a long way to go in his development, and that his accomplishments this year ultimately will, and should, go down as a footnote in a lost season in Boston.
But as far as silver linings go, you could do much worse than a guy transforming from last resort in the postseason to the pitching staff’s top performer. Rodriguez finally looks like a capable No. 2 or No. 3 starter, and that’s all the Red Sox and their fans ever have wanted.
