Grayson Rodriguez vs. Jacob deGrom Delivered
When the best pitching prospect in baseball makes his debut against the best pitcher in baseball.
In the third inning Wednesday, Grayson Rodriguez was in trouble quickly and it wasn’t his fault. Marcus Semien swung at Rodriguez’ first pitch of the inning and tapped a weak roller down the third base line; third baseman Gunnar Henderson fielded it and threw wildly down the right field line; and with nobody out Semien was on second base. Corey Seager, arguably the Rangers’ best hitter, was up.
A big moment, a make-or-break inning in Rodriguez’ major league debut. With Baltimore’s television broadcast cutting back and forth between Rodriguez, calm, on the mound, and Rodriguez’ father, desperate, in the stands, Rodriguez threw four practically perfect pitches to strike out Seager: A swing-and-miss slider on the first pitch, a dotted fastball (called a ball) at the bottom line of the strike zone, and then a pair of high fastballs to put him away:
This is the moment you might have said, “Grayson Rodriguez has arrived.”
Fans say arrived. Writers say arrived. Ballplayers tend to use a different verb to convey the transition from a minor league identity to a major league identity: They say Establish. As in, “I want to establish myself in the big leagues.” Arrival is a moment; establishment is a process. It’s what you hope will keep you from riding the Norfolk-to-Baltimore shuttle back to Norfolk in three weeks.
Before the game, I tweeted this:
Top 20 was probably too conservative. This was the best pitching prospect in baseball, Grayson Rodriguez, making his major league debut against the best pitcher in baseball, Jacob deGrom. That’s something of a miraculous occurrence. When Stephen Strasburg was the best pitching prospect, he made his major league debut against Jeff Karstens; Clayton Kershaw got Todd Wellemeyer; Shohei Ohtani got Daniel Gossett. Grayson Rodriguez, by contrast, got to make his debut against the pitcher we hope he becomes.
What I really loved about this matchup, though, was that it even had a theme. DeGrom wasn’t just an example of the career Rodriguez might attain. He was, in some ways, in a similar situation as Rodriguez, trying to establish himself. In baseball, players never get to stop establishing.
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