Elvin Rodríguez and the Brewers Took an Important Step Toward His Success on Monday Night

It was a silver lining in an otherwise uninspiring blowout loss—the Brewers' fourth in their first 17 games, which Pat Murphy deemed "concerning"—in multiple ways. Yes, Elvin Rodríguez spared the rest of an overworked bullpen by eating five innings in long relief on Monday night, but more important was how he did it.

The 27-year-old's MLB return (after pitching in Nippon Professional Baseball last year) got off to a dreadful start. Forced to make two starts due to injuries throughout the rotation, he coughed up 11 runs—including five home runs—in nine innings. A suspect game plan underlaid those struggles.

In spring training, the Brewers had Rodríguez lean heavily on his four-seamer and cutter, and the results were similarly uninspiring: a strong 7.5 strikeout-to-walk ratio, but a .370 opponent batting average and nine earned runs allowed in 10 ⅔ innings.

Those numbers would be easy to shrug off, were player and team merely refining those two fastballs in a low-pressure environment before switching to a more balanced mix in the regular season. That wasn't the case. In those first two starts, 73.6% of Rodríguez's pitches were a four-seamer or cutter, following a staff-wide trend of Milwaukee starters: throwing fastballs roughly 70% of the time.

The Brewers have some sound motivations behind instructing many of their arms to lean on multiple fastball variants, but that approach never made the most sense for Rodríguez. His backspin four-seamer can be an above-average pitch due to its elite carry and solid velocity, but his cutter is a poor one. By contrast, the highlight of his five-pitch arsenal is his sweeping slider, which was pivotal to his success last year.

The NPB pitch modeling app (created by Twitter user @bouno05) tagged Rodríguez's sweeper with a 169 Stuff+ rating in 2024. It induced whiffs on 44% of swings and rarely allowed loud contact. His curveball yielded less impressive box score results, but posted a gaudy 68% ground ball rate. His cutter, meanwhile, graded poorly, producing neither whiffs nor favorable contact.

Differences in the size and tackiness of the NPB baseball make it break more than the MLB ball, so the same pitch can move less and grade slightly worse (through no fault of a pitcher) simply by crossing to the States. Still, since Rodríguez's return, the models at FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus have given similar estimates of his arsenal. Most notably, they are bullish on the sweeper and bearish on the cutter. (For Stuff+, 100 is average and higher is better. For StuffPro, 0 is average and negative numbers are better.)

After two starts of throwing plenty of fastballs—including perhaps the worst pitch in his arsenal—and largely eschewing his breaking stuff, Rodríguez implied that the new mix was leaving him uncomfortable on the mound and unable to best attack hitters.

"In Japan, I just pitched a little bit more free," he said through an interpreter after allowing seven runs in his second start. "What I did over there was just mixed all my pitches. I used the curveball, I used the changeup, and really, I just mixed. So I don't think I've felt completely comfortable. I don't feel like I've felt completely myself as a pitcher out there to date. Just missing the feeling of being a little bit more free out there, using all of my pitches."

Last week's acquisition of Quinn Priester bumped Rodríguez to a long relief role. Before he appeared in the series finale in Colorado, he spoke to Eric Haase about his preferred method of attacking hitters. He threw 15 pitches, including five breaking balls and no cutters. He had a similar conversation with William Contreras before his outing on Monday night, and the two deployed a dramatically different game plan from his first couple of outings.

Rodríguez threw two straight four-seamers to Kerry Carpenter to open his appearance, the second of which Carpenter sent over the wall in center for another home run. After that, this was the breakdown of his remaining 66 pitches:

• 23 four-seamers (35%)
• 21 sweepers (32%)
• 13 curveballs (20%)
• 7 changeups (10%)
• 2 cutters (3%)

It was a complete reversal, from the fastball-heavy approach to one centered around Rodríguez's breaking pitches.

"As soon as I got in there, it really felt like we were on the same page about what we wanted to do," he said of enacting the new strategy with Contreras.

It worked. The homer was the lone run Rodríguez allowed in his five innings. He scattered two more hits and struck out seven. His sweeper generated five whiffs out of 10 swings, and several routine flyouts.

"When you get knocked around a little bit in some games, you say to yourself, 'Okay, what adjustments can I make? What about this? Maybe this is a better pitch than I thought. Maybe I'll go about it a little differently,'" Murphy said. "So credit to him."

"I feel like whenever you're able to mix your pitches, that's how you're able to keep hitters off-balance," Rodríguez said. "And I think that's where all pitchers find their success, is finding good sequences and mixing their pitches."

Regardless of how the Brewers and Rodríguez arrived at the mix he initially used, these last few weeks should serve as a cautionary tale. Emphasizing fastball variants has worked for Colin Rea, Bryse Wilson, Tobias Myers, and others because their arsenals fit that approach. Rodríguez differs from those pitchers. Trying to fit any hurler into a mold that does not match his strengths and pitch characteristics, whether intentional or not, is a misstep. If that's what happened here, it's a surprising error by a pitching development team that has otherwise excelled by letting guys be themselves.

No pitch mix will look exactly the same across every outing. Due to matchups, feel for certain pitches that day, and myriad other factors, there will be times when it makes sense for Rodríguez to throw a few more fastballs than he did on Monday. However, the starting point should always be what he's good at: spinning his breaking balls, working his riding four-seamer off of them, and sprinkling in some of his other offerings.