Elvin Rodriguez Fits Multiple Brewers Molds. Which One Will They Choose to Press Him Into?

[Jack Stern]

Recent Brewers pitching staffs have been islands of misfit toys, with some hurlers succeeding through deception and others with impressive raw stuff. Their recent signing straddles the line between both approaches, meaning Chris Hook and company must decide between two distinct paths to maximize his arsenal.

Image courtesy of © Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images

The first sentence of the teaser paragraph above is not news to fans or analysts who have followed the Brewers closely in recent years. Last year, starters like Colin Rea, Tobias Myers, and Aaron Civale used great deception to help their unremarkable (or even poor) pitches play up. Relievers like Devin Williams and Trevor Megill—and, to lesser extents, Jared Koenig, Joel Payamps, Aaron Ashby, and Elvis Peguero—relied on remarkable velocity, movement, or both to close out late leads.

It’s not a hard and fast rule. Bryan Hudson is among baseball’s most deceptive pitchers as a reliever, and Freddy Peralta’s raw pitch traits are his strength as a starter. For the most part, though, the Brewers have built around pitch-masking over stuff in the rotation, and vice-versa in the bullpen.

Enter Elvin Rodriguez, whom the club signed to a split contract a few weeks ago. The 26-year-old stands with a foot in each realm, featuring a deep arsenal headlined by a couple of intriguing pitches. That means he could fit into Milwaukee’s staff in multiple capacities, but it also puts the pitching development brass at a potential crossroads in choosing the best way to further his development.

Rodriguez was a starter before relocating to Japan, where he remained somewhat stretched out as a multi-inning reliever for Nippon Professional Baseball’s Yakult Swallows. He maintained his full six-pitch mix in 2024, and the chasm between the best and worst of his repertoire is wide.

The standouts are a mid-90s backspin four-seamer and a deadly slider. Both will look slightly less impressive by comparison to big-league stuff upon Rodriguez’s Stateside return (those Stuff+ values are for NPB, and don't make direct comparisons to MLB offerings), but they’re still strong pitches that should headline his mix in any role.

Rodriguez’s fastball averaged 18.7 inches of induced vertical break in the minor leagues in 2023, but his high-three-quarters arm slot and game plan of working the ball low and away to right-handers meant his -5.2 vertical approach angle was worse than average. In other words, it doesn’t have quite the rising illusion one might expect from his break numbers. Its carry is still decent, but it doesn't materially separate from what hitters anticipate when they see the ball out of his hand.

His slider has the look of a plus pitch, even at the game’s highest level. With its 169 Stuff+ grade and 44% whiff rate, it was an elite pitch overseas. It performed similarly in Triple-A in 2023, where he added movement to morph it into more of a sweeping breaker while in the Tampa Bay Rays organization. Despite its fantastic performance, he deployed it just 13.1% of the time last year and at only a 19.2% rate against righties. That ought to change as a Brewer. Here's what his pitch movement looked like in that stint with Tampa in 2023; notice the slider moves more to the glove side than an average pitch of the same type, while the fastball is rising.

The rest of his arsenal is well-rounded but less enthralling. Rodriguez’s curveball and changeup were great for inducing rollover swings, but the former rarely produced whiffs. NPB opponents destroyed his cutter. The extremely limited quantity of sinkers hints that it’s not yet a fully developed pitch, and it’s one Rodriguez may struggle to throw anyway from his slot. In the graphic above, you can see the extreme lack of vertical depth on the changeup, indicating that he might have a hard time pronating, which would make it harder to succeed with either the change or the sinker (though, not impossible). 

There’s enough here for the Brewers to apply the deceptive kitchen-sink approach, especially if they think Rodriguez can contribute as a bulk pitcher. Tightening up the cutter and sinker would give him the three-fastball mix they love, and a respectable curveball and changeup should help stave off a severe platoon split. It’s an unexciting swingman profile, but contending teams need such pitchers to stay afloat throughout a lengthy regular season.

Rodriguez has a higher ceiling as a short-range reliever, where he could excel as a true “stuff” hurler. Instead of spending time fine-tuning his fringe pitches, he and the Brewers could scrap them and maximize what he does best. Simplifying his game plan to a heavy dose of sliders and elevated fastballs, plus some curveballs and changeups to lefties, could transform Rodriguez into a high-strikeout monster in the middle innings.

With pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training next week, more information is coming regarding Rodriguez’s role. In the meantime, it’s easy to envision two distinct paths for his Brewers tenure. His new coaches have no shortage of ways to mold his arsenal as they deem best for his output and the club’s needs.

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[jesusoftheapes]

He looks like he figured his stuff out from his Japan reels.   He has an insane amount of pitches.  6 pitches with at least 3 variants to boot.  He could be a surprise winner for the Crew .