The Orioles may soon bring up one of the sport’s top pitching prospects. Grayson Rodriguez will join the team in Texas tomorrow and is under consideration to start their game against the Rangers. Manager Brandon Hyde told reporters after tonight’s game that Baltimore hasn’t yet named their starter for tomorrow (relayed by Dan Connolly of the Athletic). That’s not to say it won’t be Rodriguez, who is still expected to join the MLB team in Arlington, but that doesn’t seem official as of now.
Rodriguez, 23, competed for a spot in the club’s Opening Day rotation but struggled to a 7.04 ERA in 15 1/3 innings of work during camp, prompting the club to option him to Triple-A. However, right-hander Kyle Bradish left his start yesterday with a foot contusion in the second inning. That pushed Tyler Wells to pitch five innings in relief of Bradish rather than make his scheduled start tonight. With Kyle Gibson moving up to take the ball tonight in place of Wells, that left no one to start tomorrow’s game against Texas.
It appears Rodriguez will make that start. As Dan Connolly of the Athletic points out (on Twitter), recalling a pitcher who had been optioned within the past 15 days would require a corresponding injured list transaction. That’ll presumably result in Bradish landing on the 15-day IL, though Baltimore hasn’t finalized that decision yet. According to Connolly, Austin Voth would be the likeliest option to take the ball if Bradish doesn’t go on the IL.
Assuming Rodriguez is tabbed for the start, it’ll be his MLB debut. Once a consensus top five prospect in the sport, Rodriguez struggled with a lat strain for much of the 2022 season. That caused him to slip slightly down some prospect rankings, though he remains a top 20 prospect in the eyes of virtually every prospecting service, with a career 2.49 ERA in the minor leagues supported by an eye-popping 35.9% strikeout rate.
Evaluators credit Rodriguez with one of the best arsenals in minor league baseball. Baseball America gives him above-average or better grades for four pitches, highlighted by plus-plus reviews of his fastball and slider. Keith Law of the Athletic and Kiley McDaniel of ESPN, by contrast, each pointed to his changeup as the headlining pitch in his arsenal.
While a few days of the season have already elapsed, there’s still enough time for Rodriguez to reach a full service year in 2023. Players are credited with a full year so long as they’re on a roster for 172 days. If Rodriguez is in the majors from here on out, he’d hit that mark. Accruing a full service year would put him on track to first reach arbitration after the 2025 season and qualify for free agency for the first time over the 2028-29 offseason.
The timing of the promotion may also be significant for the Orioles. Rodriguez is a consensus top prospect, appearing on Top 100 lists at all three of Baseball America, MLB Pipeline and ESPN. Teams that carry prospects who appear on at least two of those three lists for a full service year could recoup draft compensation as part of the collective bargaining agreement’s prospect promotion incentive. If Rodriguez logs a complete service year, the O’s would receive an extra pick in the amateur draft if he wins Rookie of the Year in 2023 or secures a top three finish in Cy Young or MVP balloting between 2023-25. Julio Rodriguez is the only player to net his team compensation under that provision so far, doing so as a result of his Rookie of the Year win in 2022.
Rodriguez is already on the 40-man roster, so the club won’t have to make a 40-man transaction. He has a full slate of minor league option years remaining, so it’s possible the O’s send him back to Triple-A Norfolk at some point if they feel he needs continued development time.
Geoff Pontes of Baseball America first reported Rodriguez was being promoted.
The worst part of the injury is they start his service clock early. That means they can’t manipulate his service time. Sad
Congrats Grayson!
The O’s are coming
The Sun gets scooped by the upstart Banner. Wow!
Everybody to the waiver wire
Welcome to the show Grayson.
I’m Vince McMahon damnit!
That didn’t take long. Hopefully he succeeds and stays!!
I wonder if he gets sent back down right after the start?
Probably depends if Bradish goes on the IL, which appears he won’t. Grayson can certainly make it difficult by pitching great.
Someone has to go on the IL in order to recall Rodriguez since he was optioned to the minors less than 15 days ago. Bradish appears to make sense unless someone else is hurt too.
Excited for Rodriguez and the Orioles.
Baseball needs the ascendancy of Birds!
That was fast
Even if he doesn’t succeed right away keep penciling him in to the line up every 5th day anyway. Hall too. Hopefully the FO is looking at 2024 not to win consistently but to get the pieces acclimated that gets them to a year in year out winning culture by 24/25?
Why aren’t the Orioles considering Voth or Watkins for the spot start? Grayson is supremely talented but he was optioned after a rough spring. It seems unlikely that he’s hammered out whatever was behind his struggles after less than a week and moreover, allowing him to flounder him the rotation could destroy his psyche.
Elias has generally refused to rush the rebuild so this moves feels unnecessarily risky.
Watkins pitched Sunday!
Voth was the easy choice here, IMO.
Surprised it’s not him. I would’ve given G-Rod a couple turns in Norfolk to right the ship. Exciting news though.
I’m going Voth. This lesser version of Grayson with no command is going to get absolutely shelled and sent right back down. Pointless move.
I’ll stick with Grayson 🙂
The pen has been used pretty heavily already. There’s less risk in letting Grayson start and, if he struggles, turn it over to Voth. Maybe.
It could also be a convenient gesture to ‘do the right thing’ and give Rodriguez a chance to start in front of a home crowd for him since he’s from Texas.
But, most importantly, at the end of the day, I don’t care—Grayson is legit and I’m excited to watch his debut!
Hall drafted in 2017, Rodriguez in 18. It’s documented from many sources they’ve got league level stuff, it’s time to see what they have. Don’t necessarily play to win this year FO, see what you have (or don’t have) in these two lads so to determine how you go about creating a rotation, whether internally or externally or both, that is solid for a 3 to 5 year winning run.
Oh, Angelos has plenty of money, if a current rotation guy(s) don’t pan out, IMO, he will spend and/or FO will trade, to get consistently competitive.
This isn’t a complete wash of a season, Jeff. Hall needs to prove he can throw strikes at AAA first.
G-Rod needed to show that too after the spring but he has a much stronger track record in that department.
I was working today so didn’t catch the game but it looks like he threw a pretty good 5 innings for us.
G-Rod!
Niiiiiice!!!!!
Dumb they should just manipulate service time.
Should have been up at the opener.
Curious… when will we get an immaculate inning of 3 strike outs and zero pitches? These clocks are making a mark in history.
Why?
Exactly.
I think Bob’s reasoning goes like this ‘Sometimes players are held down to manipulate service time which I think is ‘bad’. Therefore every player should be brought up for Opening Day’.
The goal of running a baseball club is not to maximize player salaries. Clubs don’t have a lot of tools to manage salary, and the O’s need those tools more than most. So I would have had no trouble with the O’s keeping him down until the Super 2 date.
Having said that, anyone who paid attention to G-Rod during the Spring, wasn’t surprised he didn’t make the Opening Day roster.
If anyone could make it so, Manny Muchacho would be that guy.
He shouldn’t have been up given his awful spring.
A lot of prompting going on in this article.
How will he pitch with a button down shirt and a tie on under his jersey?
All the self-serving posts here about Grayson being sent down and how the Orioles failed because they didn’t do this and that….and less than a week after the season opened he’s called up to start a game.
The O’s FO is one of the best in MLB. They know what they’re doing. They have plans and scenarios that no one posting here has any idea about (including me).
Quit taking them to the woodshed. Watch what they do tomorrow and for the next 3-4 years, and learn something about how an elite organization that has been put together than matures.
Outstanding PSA.
Two thumbs up!
Yeah as usual Samuel double dribbled all over his shoes
How are the Yankees expected to win when every day 1/3 of the line up can’t hit. It’s the MLB, if they can no longer hit why do the Yankees keen them? Does no one else want to play for them? Maybe that it.
If they’re bringing him to Texas, they need to have him pitch today. He should not be riding a shuttle or be on a taxi squad. He either needs to be pitching consistently in Norfolk or pitching in Baltimore. Don’t need to screw with the guy like we did with Gausman.
Did O’s fans see the Dan Connolly interview with Angelos? If not Anthony Franco has it on his Twitter feed.
I think the AL E. is going to be 2 divisions this year – NYY/TB and then the other 3 grouped fairly tightly. If one of the 3 is going to make the Wild Card, I’d bet on the O’s.
So he’s not so ready but called up anyway huh? That’s pretty tough.