Red Sox lefty Eduardo Rodriguez finishes 6th on Cy Young ballot
By Sean Penney
Boston Red Sox lefty Eduardo Rodriguez receiving Cy Young consideration isn’t based on a sudden leap in his ability but rather improved health.
The Baseball Writers Association of America revealed the results for the 2019 Cy Young Award, which Houston’s Justin Verlander took home for the second time in his career. The Boston Red Sox rotation was a mess this year but one of their starters performed well enough to warrant consideration on the ballot.
Eduardo Rodriguez finished sixth in AL Cy Young voting, receiving three third-place votes and a pair of fifth-place votes for a total of eight points.
The Red Sox rotation was supposed to be highlighted by a pair of former Cy Young winners in David Price and Rick Porcello, plus a perennial candidate in Chris Sale. A combination of injuries and the complete abandonment of the skills that once made them elite led to dreadful seasons for this trio but their downfall coincided with Rodriguez’s emergence as the staff ace.
Rodriguez had a career year, going 19-6 with a 3.81 ERA and 1.33 WHIP, to establish himself as one of the top pitchers in the American League.
Was this truly a breakout season or was Rodriguez the same pitcher we’ve seen before only with a larger sample size? Rodriguez set career-highs with 34 starts and 203 1/3 innings. A checkered injury history prevented him from making more than 27 appearances or reaching 138 innings in any previous season.
The larger workload led to an obvious improvement in certain counting stats. Rodriguez was third in the league in wins, a metric one would hope voters no longer use as a barometer for success. He finished ninth in strikeouts, although that’s a testament to his increase in innings. His 9.4 K/9 was his lowest since 2016. It’s still a strong strikeout rate but hardly an improvement for Rodriguez.
His 3.3 BB/9 was an increase from the previous year and a tick above his career rate. This is where the innings total comes back to haunt him – Rodriguez’s control was only slightly worse yet he ended up leading the league with 75 walks.
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The 3.81 ERA placed Rodriguez ninth among qualified AL starters but it’s barely an improvement over last year’s 3.82 ERA and his 3.86 FIP suggests he declined from 2018 when he produced a 3.65 FIP.
Each of these metrics varies only slightly on Rodriguez’s resume over the last three years. His strikeout, walk, hit and home run rates have remained relatively steady over that span. Rodriguez didn’t drastically improve his performance in 2019, he simply took the mound often enough for everyone to notice.
Rodriguez had never received Cy Young votes until this year but that comes as no surprise. Starting pitchers don’t warrant consideration if they don’t toss enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, which Rodriguez had never done before.
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That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a great pitcher before this year. He became a worthy contender for the award by finally producing at this level over the course of a full season.