The future is bright for the Baltimore Orioles. The hype for Orioles No. 1 prospect Adley Rutschman has been building ever since he was drafted, and his debut is right around the corner. While Rutschman is widely considered the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball, the Orioles also have another prospect garnering a ton of attention in 6-foot-5, 220-pound right-handed pitcher Grayson Rodriguez.
FanGraphs recently rated Rodriguez as the No. 3 prospect in all of baseball. That marks a huge jump for the 22-year-old, as he was ranked as the No. 30 prospect by FanGraphs in 2021. Kevin Goldstein, one of the writers responsible for the list, joined Glenn Clark Radio Feb. 24 to talk about how Rodriguez ended up near the top.
“When you talk to people who have access to things that we don’t, which is the pitch data from the minor leagues, Grayson Rodriguez’s pure stuff, there’s just no contest, to be honest with you, between him and the other pitching prospects in baseball,” Goldstein said. “It is absolutely dominating stuff. You’re talking about a guy who has four plus pitches. … This is overwhelming stuff and at the end of the day, that’s what made us so comfortable putting him this high on the list.”
Rodriguez’s stuff certainly translated to dominant statistics last season. He pitched in 23 games last season between High-A and Double-A, posting a combined 2.36 ERA in 103 innings. Rodriguez racked up 161 strikeouts while surrendering just 58 hits.
Rodriguez’s fastball, slider and changeup all rate as a 70, according to FanGraphs, while his curveball and cutter both rate as a 60. (A player’s attributes or tools are rated on a scale of 20-80 on the baseball scouting scale.) Rodriguez’s fastball has plenty of movement, as it sits at 96-98 mph while occasionally hitting triple digits. He also features a big, sweeping slider and a hard breaking curveball. His overall command is rated as a 40 currently, but it is projected to reach 50.
“He’s one of those guys, he can pitch in the big leagues right now and on the right day, just out-stuff guys, if that makes sense,” Goldstein said. “That’s the thing, he can just show up and just kind of out-stuff you”.
Drafting a player out of high school can always lead to very unpredictable results, especially when the player is a pitcher. However, Rodriguez is panning out just how the club hoped when the previous regime drafted him in 2018. Rodriguez was selected 11th overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft out of Central Heights High School in Nacogdoches, Texas. Since then, the righty has shown off his elite stuff and most importantly, has stayed healthy.
The one knock on Rodriguez by most analysts has been that he hasn’t really been asked to work deep in games. Last season at Bowie, Rodriguez never pitched into the sixth inning and his top single-game pitch count was 89. In that game, the right-hander tossed 4.2 innings, surrendered just one hit and tallied nine punchouts. While he hasn’t pitched too deep into games, Goldstein made it a point that a lot of other pitching prospects haven’t, either.
“There’s no pitching prospect going deep into games who can prove that he can take the bump 32 times and go 180 innings. That guy just isn’t out there,” Goldstein said. “Whatever you are discounting pitchers for, you have to apply that discount across the board.”
There’s no secret that Rodriguez certainly has the repertoire to be a major-league pitcher, but it still needs to be tightened up, according to Goldstein. While Rodriguez could make his big-league debut in 2022, the timeline could also be altered by the final outcome of the new collective bargaining agreement.
Rodriguez will not begin the season at the big-league level, but Goldstein thinks that is a good thing. Starting off in the minors will allow for him to really work on some of the pitching aspects that will help him succeed at the next level.
“There’s certainly some work to be done, some things on the margin, some work around the edges,” Goldstein said. “If they needed him, they could count on him, but I think they are going to give him a little bit of time to handle those things, so when you’re watching the Orioles game next year, you’re not saying, ‘Hey, we’re in the fifth inning, Grayson Rodriguez has thrown 92 pitches,’ you’re saying that in the sixth or seventh. That’s what you’re hoping to do right now. The stuff is there and now it’s time to really harness it and polish it and turn him into a pitcher.”
For more from Goldstein, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: William Vaughan/Bowie Baysox