KANSAS CITY — Eduardo Rodriguez was an Orioles prospect at Double-A Bowie in July 2014, doing his between-starts work one afternoon, when then-Baysox manager Gary Kendall called him into his office.
“Back then, I didn’t really know what a trade was,” Rodriguez recalled. “I didn’t really know anything. I just got a call to the manager’s office and told me you got traded to Boston and that’s it. That’s the first time I saw what a trade was. …
“I was in Double-A, so I didn’t even know about trades in the big leagues and how that works and all that until it happened to me. So that caught me by surprise.”
Rodriguez was the key to the Orioles’ trade for Andrew Miller, whom the Tigers were also trying to acquire. Detroit general manager Dave Dombrowski had been trying to put together a package, but didn’t have a prospect who could top Rodriguez, whom the Red Sox insisted on getting.
Rodriguez justified Boston’s belief by posting a 0.96 ERA and 39 strikeouts over six starts at Double-A Portland down the stretch that season. He made his Major League debut the following May, but never forgot that baseball is a business.
As he prepares for what could be his home stretch with the Tigers, starting with Wednesday’s 3-2 win over the Royals at Kauffman Stadium, he’s on the other end of the trade equation. He’s now the star that other teams will put together prospects to try to acquire, and the reason some other kid could get that call out of nowhere between now and Aug. 1. But he knows that all he can do is keep pitching.
“The only thing I can control is go out there every five days and pitch the best to help my team win the game,” he said. “That’s the way I see all this about the deadline, about the trades and all that. Just go out there and pitch and whatever I can do, I’ll do it. What I can handle, I’ll handle it, and if my future is in somebody else’s hands, it’s in somebody else’s hands.”
For four-plus innings, Rodriguez was in total control, retiring Kansas City’s first 13 batters with seven strikeouts, five groundouts and one ball hit out of the infield. Matt Duffy’s one-out single in the fifth began a string of three hits in four batters, plating two runs to put Kansas City in front, but once Miguel Cabrera’s RBI single off a 100 mph fastball from Carlos Hernandez restored Detroit’s lead, Rodriguez settled in for two more innings.
“He pitched where he needed to. He’s effective,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “He’s been doing this a long time. He knows how to pitch. He knows how to use his cutter, uses his changeup well.”
Rodriguez allowed two runs on four hits over seven innings, throwing 65 of 89 pitches for strikes. His fastball drew eight swings and misses and seven called strikes. His changeup, a pitch he has used less than 20 percent of the time as a Tiger, drew three swinging strikes.
“The hitters are the ones who tell me what pitch to use,” Rodriguez said. “Today it felt like that was the pitch for me to win the game.”
Rodriguez has a little more control than some players on the trade market. First, he has a list of 10 teams to which he can veto a deal. Then he has the opt-out clause at the root of his trade status. The expectation is that he’ll exercise that clause at season’s end in search for a better deal than the $49 million on his contract over the next three years, though he isn’t committing either way.
“I feel like I already signed for a lot of money,” he said. “I feel like I have a really good contract and I feel like I can take care of my family for the rest of my life with the money I’m already making. For me now, it’s just enjoying going out there every five days. That’s my whole mentality.”
Asked further about his future, he said, “I signed here five years, man. That’s part of the contract. But right now, I really enjoy pitching here. I really enjoy all my teammates. I really enjoy playing here. I enjoy going out there with all the catchers and everybody. So for me, just go out there and pitch every five days. That’s the only thing I can control.”