How Familiarity With Eduardo Rodriguez Helped Red Sox Beat Tigers

The Red Sox got the best of an old friend Sunday afternoon at Fenway Park.

Eduardo Rodriguez entered Sunday allowing four runs or less in all but one of his 17 starts on the 2023 Major League Baseball season. But Rodriguez endured an uncharacteristically rough day in the Detroit-Boston series finale in which he allowed six earned runs on 10 hits across five innings. It marked the most runs given up by Rodriguez in a Tigers uniform and his first outing of six earned runs or more since September 2021.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the unusual struggles came against the Red Sox, who rostered Rodriguez for six seasons. And as Alex Cora explained after his team’s 6-3 win, the familiarity seemed to alter Rodriguez’s plan of attack in his first start in Boston as a visitor.

“Early on (Rodriguez) shied away from the changeup on purpose, probably, because we know that’s his pitch,” Cora told reporters, per The Boston Globe. “Then we got on the fastball.”

Rodriguez’s fastball certainly was not an effective pitch Sunday. Connor Wong’s RBI triple and Adam Duvall’s run-scoring single and three-run home run all were smacked off of E-Rod’s heater.

On the other side of the diamond, the Red Sox enjoyed a very productive day for their pitching staff. This included a sharp outing from Garrett Whitlock in his first big league appearance in over a month.