Carlos Rodriguez is Learning Early: Not Everything in the Sink Withstands the Heat of MLB Kitchens

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Milwaukee Brewers knew their latest rookie starting pitcher wasn't fully ready, even as they called him up. Circumstances forced them to make the move. Now, the rookie himself is learning how much he still has to learn.

Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports

In scouting parlance, there are some common turns of phrase that attach themselves to particular players with unusual tenacity. For Carlos Rodriguez, the one that stuck was "kitchen sink." Rodriguez doesn't throw hard (by big-league standards) or have any one offering with which he's capable of dominating opposing batters. He leans on a holistic approach, throwing six different pitches to both lefties and righties--five, even if you discount the minimal usage he makes of the changeup to righties and the slider to lefties.

Through three starts in the big leagues, it looks like Rodriguez's kitchen sink needs work. He has a 7.30 ERA, having allowed 19 hits (three of them homers) and struck out only nine of the 57 batters he's faced. Part of that is tough luck, and part of it might be the long-term deficiencies in Rodriguez's game showing through. Mostly, though, it's the league giving Rodriguez a rough lesson: the successful kitchen-sink approach in MLB is a complex one. Mixing pitches evenly isn't enough.

Often, pitchers lean into the kitchen-sink approach because they can't execute a more streamlined one consistently or tightly enough. Take, for instance, Rodriguez's four-seam fastball. It's not a high-velocity offering, but coming from Rodriguez's low-three-quarter slot, it does have a flat vertical approach angle (VAA), a desirable trait for that pitch.

Here's Rodriguez's first career strikeout, achieved with the fastball.

There are two problems--two drawbacks to the effectiveness of the four-seamer. Firstly, he gets that flat VAA not from especially good actual ride on the pitch (even accounting for arm slot), but from pounding away at the top of the zone with it. That limits the pitch's utility, because it can only get strikes and outs for him when he can locate it along the upper edge of the zone. That makes it likely to induce fly balls, and hard-hit fly balls turn into home runs. He's given up two homers on the heater already, and a few more hits, besides.

In turn, that brings us to the other problem: Rodriguez isn't yet locating that fastball all that well. With loose command of a pitch that really only plays at the edge of the zone--and along just one edge, at that--he's not in any position to lean heavily on the fastball.

Instead of being a four-seamer guy, then, Rodriguez has to be a multiple-fastball guy: four-seamer, cutter, sinker. In one sense, that's ok. The Brewers strongly prefer their pitchers be able to give opponents more than one fastball look, anyway. In this case, though, it starts a chain reaction. The flat-VAA fastball Rodriguez can only throw at the top of the zone pairs with his curveball, but not with his slider, and it works with the changeup, but only against lefties. His sinker works with his slider, but not with his curve. The cutter and sinker work in concert fairly well, but the cutter doesn't set up the slider or the curve very well. Nor is it a swing-and-miss pitch, itself.

A year from now, much of that might have changed. Rodriguez has an athletic delivery, but it could be cleaned up a bit, and if and when that happens, perhaps his command will improve, too. Improve his command of even two of these six pitches, and the web of interactions between the offerings gets several new threads. It gets stronger.

Throwing the kitchen sink at big-league hitters is tough. It's an attempt to beat guys who can handle better raw stuff than you have, using guile, sequencing, and location. Even for pitchers who have good pitchability, it takes a while to get those things right. Rodriguez projects as the type of hurler who will figure it out, but it doesn't quite count as a surprise that he hasn't done so out of the gate. He was called up because the team needed more reinforcement in the rotation, not because he was knocking down the door to the big leagues.

These reps in the big leagues are valuable, but surely, the Brewers would love to get him back into a rhythm and restore his confidence in Triple-A this summer, so he can claim a bigger role and try to find success in 2025. Right now, their injuries and depth chart make that impractical, but it should be the medium-term goal. In the meantime, Rodriguez can continue to experiment with combinations, sequences, and mindsets that might help him improve on the job, even with the knowledge that full-fledged big-league success is a year away.

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[Ro Mueller]

Thanks for this piece.

When CF-Rod got the call, it felt like the Chourio promotion to me - i.e. prioritizing near-term development and long-term success over immediate results (e.g. we could have picked up a veteran or gone with Chad Patrick instead, and maybe Taylor Clarke or Evan McKendry once they’re back to full form).

I’m still surprised at this in CF-Rod’s case, as he’d often been talked about as a high-floor, low-ceiling guy (e.g. future number 4 or 5 starting pitcher), but I’m sure the organization knows what it’s doing.

CF-Rod struggled mightily in his initial AAA starts, so we shouldn’t be surprised if there’s some steep learning required to perform well in the Majors too.