Rodriguez Trade Is Finally Starting To Pay Big Dividends For Angels Rotation

When the Los Angeles Angels traded for Grayson Rodriguez, they knew it would be a while before they would see him in top form on the field. Now they're starting to see better things from Rodriguez, and yesterday against the Detroit Tigers results were impressive.

Rodriguez made his third start of the season yesterday, and he pitched five strong innings. He allowed just one run, and had the kind of command that the angels were expecting once he was ready. Now the trick is to keep him healthy, and so far there haven't been any setbacks.

“Definitely taking steps in the right direction,” Rodriguez said in a piece written by Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com. “I'm not fully where I want to be yet, but just using these building blocks to keep going, keep pushing forward.”

Rodriguez means a lot to the Angels rotation. He was a key factor in helping the team win back-to-back series for the first time this year, and the Angels are expecting more of the same. Having four real starters makes a huge difference from game to game, and yesterday it showed. 

“That's huge,” Rodriguez said. “That's what we talked about just after the game. We've still got so much baseball left in front of us and just got to stack these wins on top of each other and keep going and keep winning series.”

Rodriguez has gone from a bad outing against the Dodgers to a somewhat better one  against Texas. Against the Tigers, however, he looked much more like a pitcher who can slide in at the top of the rotation, which would be a welcome addition for manager Kurt Suzuki.

“I think he's consistently been better and better with his execution and things like that,”  Suzuki said. “It's nice to see him get better each time he goes out there, velo-wise, pitch execution-wise and all that stuff.”

Rodriguez is also working consistently on his pitch count. He got up to 88 against the Tigers and his velocity was just over 96 mph.

There's room for improvement as well. Rodriguez got in some  bad counts, but he was able to battle back and now the idea is to get ahead more often.

“I fell behind some guys and was able to get back in it,” Rodriguez said. “I was down 3-0 maybe two or three times and still came back and got an out. I think that was important. Just being able to still hang in there even behind in the count.”

It’s definitely a stretch to think Rodriguez’s performance so far represents a turnaround, but he’s definitely a big improvement over what the Angels have been running out on the mound so far.