| Rodriguez, who will turn 26 in May, was selected by the White Sox in the 14th round of the 2005 draft out of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. After struggling a bit as starting pitcher, he was converted to a reliever in 2008. He responded to his new role with an impressive bullpen debut, posting a combined 3.29 ERA with 88 strikeouts over 79 1/3 innings split between Double-A Birmingham and Triple-A Charlotte. Rodriguez struggled a bit with his command—he walked 33 total last season, with 3.80 and 3.68 BB/9 rates at each level, respectively—but he held opposing hitters to a .191 batting average against him and showed the ability to miss bats.
At 6’1”, 190 lbs., Rodriguez is not the intimidator that, say, Grant Balfour is coming out of the pen, but he brings an aggressive mentality to the mound that should be perfect for chewing up outs and bridging the gap between the starter and the impact relievers for the Rays. He effectively mixes up his looks and uses three different arm angles to attack hitters, making it difficult for batters to get comfortable in the box and get a read on his pitches.
Rodriguez has touched 93 MPH with good life in the past when throwing from a higher arm slot, and has hit 88 MPH with decent sink when he throws sidearm. He features a slider as his second pitch, but it’s almost as if he throws more than two pitches because he changes speed on his slider as well as the varying fastball offerings. Rodriguez will use the sweeping slider against right-handed hitters to get them to chase, as well as back-dooring a sharper version to freeze the lefties.
What’s intriguing about Rodriguez as a valuable middle guy is that not only is his stuff better than the average middle reliever, but he is capable of getting left-handed hitters out just as frequently as he puts away the righties, making him a candidate to work more than one inning in low-leverage situations.
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