DETROIT — Eduardo Rodriguez’s first Major League pitch since May 28 ended up bunted to the first-base side of the mound, sending the Tigers’ ace charging to field it. He had it in plenty of time to toss to first for the out, but with first baseman Spencer Torkelson off the bag to chase the bunt, A’s leadoff hitter Esteury Ruiz beat second baseman Zack Short to the bag for an infield single.
That was Rodriguez’s welcome back from the injured list, where he’d spent five weeks bouncing back from a ruptured pulley in his left index finger. His return outing, a Tigers 12-3 loss on Wednesday night, didn’t get any better from there.
“Healthwise he checked out great, which is very important and the positive take out of it,” manager A.J. Hinch said after the defeat. “It was a weird game for him, because I thought his stuff was OK.”
The good news for Rodriguez coming out of his four innings was that he felt fine. The bad news was that he was not particularly effective. Once the A’s pounded him for a season-high five runs on six hits, the momentum the Tigers hoped to build out of a restored rotation featuring Rodriguez and Tarik Skubal had been squandered.
It’s a twist of irony for a team that won what amounted to three bullpen games on the road last week. Then again, scoring three runs in two games against an Oakland team with an MLB-worst 5.95 ERA doesn’t leave much room for starters to settle in compared to the 19 runs scored over Detroit’s two bullpen games in Texas and Colorado.
Rodriguez’s pitches looked much the same as they did before his injury. At times, they were nasty, evidenced by seven strikeouts in 18 batters. However, his command was spotty, despite not walking a batter. Ruiz’s bunt single sent Rodriguez down a 26-pitch, 13-strike opening inning that included three-ball counts to four of the six batters he faced. One of them was Ryan Noda, who pounced on a 3-0 fastball and lined it into the right-field seats for a two-run home run.
“The command of the fastball was all over the place,” Rodriguez said. “I was getting behind a lot of the hitters, and [I] had to come back to the strike zone and paid for it.”
By all accounts, it wasn’t a grip issue; Rodriguez said the finger gave him no problems. Likewise, his velocity was actually a tick up from his season average, according to Statcast. And Rodriguez still threw fastballs for nine called strikes. The adrenaline of his first game back could have worked for him on velo and against him on location.
“From that point, a little bit of a mystery,” Hinch said.
Rodriguez struck out five of his final seven batters, but the other two knocked in runs — Aledmys Díaz on a third-inning RBI double, Shea Langeliers on a home run leading off the fourth.
Though Rodriguez leaned on his fastball for 34 of his 79 pitches, he threw a near-equal mix of his secondary arsenal — 14 sliders, 13 cutters and 11 changeups. The fastball set up four swings and misses off the changeup, including a second-inning strikeout of Nick Allen, but the changeup was also the pitch Díaz hit for his double after Rodriguez couldn’t finish him off with an 0-2 count. He drew five called strikes on cutters, but the one he threw to Langeliers on an 0-1 count was on the inner half of the plate for the right-handed hitter to pull.
“The command was an issue,” Rodriguez said. “It’s something I work on all the time, so I just have to work to get it better for the next start.”
If rust is the issue, the challenge for Rodriguez is that he’ll have another lengthy break before his next outing, thanks to next week’s All-Star break. Hinch said he’ll line up Rodriguez to pitch early out of the break in Seattle. There’s a potential side benefit to that schedule: If Rodriguez pitches one of the first two games against the Mariners, he’d be on schedule to make four more starts before the Aug. 1 Trade Deadline.
One outing like this shouldn’t impact Rodriguez’s market, but it gives him something to work on.
“I have to keep myself in shape, throw bullpens, long bullpens, and see when my next start is going to be,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve been through that a lot of years already.”