© Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports
Dereck Rodriguez is having an unpredictably good rookie year. As the Giants’ season has fallen apart and the team recently set a San Francisco record by losing 11-straight games, Rodriguez has remained the lone consistent bright spot.
His campaign begun as an unheralded free agent signing who was best known for being the son of legendary catcher Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez. For the majority of the season, his father’s image was the first one that popped up on Google when you typed in “Dereck Rodriguez.”
Rodriguez was drafted as an outfielder, but after struggling offensively, he began pitching in 2014. He hadn’t pitched in a major league game until this season.
Since working his way into the starting rotation in June, Rodriguez has turned in what seems like a constant barrage of six-inning, one- or two-run outings. The outfielder-turned-pitcher has gained credibility as a dominant starting pitcher and his name has been floated in the Rookie of the Year conversation.
In his latest start in the Giants’ 3-2 loss to the Colorado Rockies on Sunday, he allowed just one earned run through six innings. If that line sounds familiar, it’s because Rodriguez has had nearly that exact stat line for the duration of his tenure as a Giants starter. He has 14 starts of six-plus innings and two or fewer earned runs this season.
According to Stats, LLC., Rodriguez and Steve Rogers, a pitcher for the Montreal Expos, are the only two players since 1913 to allow two runs or fewer in six-plus innings in 13 of their first 16 starts. The only other person to do that was Juan Marichal as a sixth-year Giants veteran in 1965.
Rodriguez’s 2.30 ERA ranks fifth in the majors out of pitchers who have logged at least 100 innings. The other guys on that list – Jacob deGrom (NL), Chris Sale, Blake Snell, Trevor Bauer (AL) – are battling it out for Cy Young Award honors.
The problem is that despite all those stats, Rodriguez won’t become the first Giants pitcher to win Rookie of the Year since John Montefusco in 1975.
It’s not because he’s done anything wrong. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Rodriguez is simply a casualty of poor timing.
His stats are directly in line with most starting pitchers who’ve won the Rookie of the Year – except, of course, his innings pitched.
Since 1947, when Jackie Robinson won the first-ever MLB Rookie of the Year award (it started as a league-wide award until it split to have both AL and NL winners in 1949), there have been 26 starting pitchers to win the award.
In those 71 years, there have been two starting pitchers to win the award while pitching less than 155 innings: Jacob deGrom (140.1 IP in 2014) and the Giants’ ex-pitching coach, Dave Righetti (103 IP in 1981).
Rodriguez has only pitched 109.1 innings so far. As a starter, that won’t be enough to give him qualifying status in statistical categories at the end of the season – not that it’s necessary in Rookie of the Year voting. He is almost certain to make two more starts this season and if his average of 6.06 innings per start holds true, he’ll finish somewhere around 121 total innings pitched.
While deGrom and Righetti both won the award with less than 140 innings pitched, they had far different circumstances.
Righetti – who was converted from a starter to a closer three years later – was an anomaly in that he faced extremely weak competition for the award. His only two competitors – Rich Gedman and Bob Ojeda, both Boston Red Sox players – had less or similarly-low playing time. Gedman batted .288 but played just 62 games and Ojeda, also a starting pitcher, only played in 10 games with a 3.12 ERA compared to Righetti’s 2.05 ERA in 15 games.
Before Righetti, 13 of the 14 starting pitchers to win the award had pitched at least 199 innings. While baseball has evolved since then and the era of 200+ inning rookie pitchers has disappeared, the ERA requirement has remained similar.
Since Kerry Wood won Rookie of the Year in 1998, he and seven other starting pitchers have won the award, with an average innings total of 169.7 and ERA of 3.21. The all-time average for ROY-winning starting pitchers is 2.94.
But in the 2010s, the criteria has become slightly stricter than the 2000s. No pitcher since 2011 has won the award with an ERA above Michael Fulmer’s 3.06 mark in 2016. Below is a look at how Rodriguez stacks up against the most recent starting pitchers who’ve won Rookie of the Year (the statistics below come from Baseball Reference):
The closest comparison for Rodriguez is deGrom, who, like Rodriguez, has failed to receive consistent run support this year.
In 2014, deGrom’s only real competition was the Cincinnati Reds’ Billy Hamilton, who stole 56 bases but batted just .250. DeGrom even batted .217 that year, while Hamilton failed to crack a .300 on-base percentage. It left voters to cast for deGrom despite the low innings total.
Fulmer largely won the award in 2016 because his competitors – Gary Sanchez and Tyler Naquin – effectively canceled each other out. Naquin’s .296 batting average, 43 RBIs and 14 home runs were nothing to scoff at and his 116 games were more than enough for the ROY threshold.
But in less than half that time (53 games), Sanchez had a .299 batting average with 20 home runs and 42 RBIs. The problem was that in voters’ minds, Sanchez didn’t have enough games to win the award. However, his stats were undeniably better than Naquin’s, leaving Fulmer to snatch the award.
The best batter any of the above pitchers faced was when Jose Fernandez faced Yasiel Puig, who batted .319 with 19 home runs in 2013. But Fernandez had by far the most dominant stats out of any of the recent starting pitchers to win the ROY crown. Looking back, Puig’s numbers pale in comparison to this year’s top-two ROY candidates.
Rodriguez’s rookie cohorts are historically talented and they’ve played more than enough games to validate their seasons, whereas Rodriguez is on the fringe in that respect. The Braves’ Ronald Acuña and the Nationals’ Juan Soto are much better than the competition that the aforementioned winners have faced. The Marlins’ Brian Anderson is a strong third candidate who’s played nearly all season, but he’s well below the pace of Acuña and Soto.
Rodriguez himself has taken note of their success.
While voters in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America probably won’t take pitcher-batter duels as a reason to decide whether a pitcher like Rodriguez should beat out a batter like Acuña for the ROY crown, it’s worth noting that Rodriguez was well-prepared for the Braves’ 20-year-old leadoff hitter when he faced him September 10. He got him to ground out on a first-pitch cutter.
“I’ve faced Acuña in the past in the minors,” Rodriguez said. “I knew he was going to try to ambush the first pitch. It’s the easiest pitch to hit, first-pitch fastball of the game. So I was trying to make it a little bit tough on him and give him a cutter and it worked out.”
Acuña went 0-for-2 with a walk against Rodriguez that night. To put in perspective what he’s done this season, here’s how Acuña’s outrageous stats rank against Giants batters:
Acuña will likely finish the season qualified in all categories, as will Soto, the other top-tier competitor Rodriguez is up against. At just 19 years old, the Nationals’ left fielder has numbers that are just as ridiculous as Acuña’s in roughly the same timeframe:
Rodriguez faced Soto in his third MLB outing June 9 and had the exact same result as he did against Acuña, walking Soto once and securing a pair of outs in the other two at-bats.
Soto and Acuña’s stats leave them both neck-and-neck as the NL’s ROY frontrunners. While Rodriguez hasn’t counted himself out of contention, he’s aware of who he’s up against.
“I faced Acuña in the minor leagues a couple time, so I went in the game with the past that me and him have and what he’s been doing up here,” Rodriguez said. “I faced Soto when I first got called up here. When I faced him, I got the vibe like the kid’s been here for a long time. Those two are going to be special for a long time.”
It’s hard to be upset about a stellar season simply because two generational talents will probably beat you out for an award. Rodriguez has no such negative feelings.
“I’m happy,” Rodriguez said. “I came up, it was the first year of spring training, big league camp and then I come up in May and after one outing out of the bullpen, they put me straight in the rotation, so I have nothing to complain about. I feel really blessed to have the year that I’ve had and be healthy. I feel great right now.”