Late into the night on Dec. 6, 2023, news broke that the Diamondbacks had made one of the bigger splashes of the offseason. They signed left-handed starter Eduardo Rodriguez to a four-year, $80 million contract, with a vesting option for a fifth year.
It was just the fourth time in franchise history in which the Diamondbacks dished out a four-year guarantee to a free-agent starting pitcher. The results on the first three were all over the place.
The first one came before the 1999 season, when then-majority owner Jerry Colangelo convinced lefty Randy Johnson to sign a four-year deal worth around $52 million. It went down as possibly the best free-agent pitcher contract ever. Johnson won the NL Cy Young all four years.
In December of 2015, the Diamondbacks signed right-hander Zack Greinke to a six-year, $206.5 million deal. While Greinke was stellar from 2017-19, the Diamondbacks decided that they would rather eat some money and trade him at the 2019 deadline than continue to allocate more than a quarter of their payroll to one player.
Three of the four players the Diamondbacks received in return have since been designated for assignment. The other, infielder Josh Rojas, was part of last year’s Paul Sewald trade.
Then, there was the Madison Bumgarner contract, which ended up as a full-scale disaster. Bumgarner signed a five-year, $85 million deal with the Diamondbacks in December of 2019 and went on to post a 5.23 ERA in parts of four seasons. The Diamondbacks designated him for assignment nearly two full years before the deal was up, eating around $35 million in the process.
Nonetheless, Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen was adamant that the Bumgarner deal would not deter him from making similarly sized investments in the future. Sure enough, after an unexpected World Series run in 2023, the Diamondbacks pushed their chips in and landed Rodriguez.
While fourth months on the injured list is far from an ideal start, it is far too early to judge Rodriguez’s contract. But in Game 2 of the Diamondbacks’ doubleheader on Wednesday in Cleveland, he will toe the rubber for the first time for his new team. (He was originally scheduled to debut on Tuesday, but the baseball weather gods had other ideas, with Tuesday’s game begin postponed.) And if he pitches like he did last year with the Tigers and helps the D-backs make a deep playoff run, memories of his absence will soon fade away.
Here are a few thoughts ahead of E-Rod’s first D-backs pitch.
1. Eduardo Rodriguez’s rehab was a rollercoaster
When Rodriguez left his spring training start on March 19 with lower back tightness, he did not expect to miss time at all. He had felt something similar last September in a start with the Detroit Tigers; he left that game, too, but he still made his next start six days later. In this case, Rodriguez wound up missing 4 1/2 months.
The initial diagnosis was not that dire, though. Rodriguez’s MRI showed a strain in his lat, but it appeared that he could start throwing again fairly quickly. He told reporters on March 22 that he felt “95 percent normal.” Just a week after the initial injury, he started playing catch.
But on April 9, Rodriguez felt something in his lat again during a bullpen session. A follow-up MRI showed incomplete healing. The Diamondbacks shut him down again.
Several weeks later, manager Torey Lovullo was asked if he there was any part of the process that he wished he could have back.
“We all learned a very valuable lesson,” Lovullo told reporters on April 29. “If we could choose to do things differently, it would be to re-image, make sure everything was good and then keep pushing forward.”
After roughly a month of being shut down, Rodriguez began a throwing program. On July 6, he had yet another MRI that showed sufficient healing. Soon after, he threw off a mound and began to ramp up his workload. That brings us to game two of Wednesday’s doubleheader in Cleveland — almost exactly one month later — when Rodriguez will make his Diamondbacks debut. (Assuming the baseball gods don’t thwart him again.)
Interestingly, Rodriguez opted to bypass a rehab assignment and go directly from a sim game in the Arizona Complex League to the majors. The gap from rookie-league hitters to major-league hitters — particularly those in a solid Guardians lineup — is vast. We will see how Rodriguez responds.
2. Proper expectations for Rodriguez are hard to pinpoint
On paper, Rodriguez could provide a huge boost to the Diamondbacks rotation. Last year with the Tigers, he went 13-9 with a 3.30 ERA, 1.15 WHIP and 143 strikeouts to 48 walks in 152 2/3 innings. As a unit, Diamondbacks starters have posted a 4.72 ERA this year, which is the fifth-worst mark in baseball.
It’s important to note, however, that starters coming off arm injuries are not locks to return to form. Even just this year, there are plenty of examples.
New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole has a 5.09 ERA in eight starts after coming back from an elbow injury. Los Angeles Dodgers flamethrower Bobby Miller posted a 9.87 ERA in four starts after returning from shoulder inflammation; he has not pitched in the majors since. Even Houston Astros frontline starter Framber Valdez, who has a stellar 3.56 ERA for the season, struggled initially after returning from an elbow injury in late April. He had a 5.22 ERA in his first five starts post-injury.
Of course, this is not to say that all injured starters struggle. There are many examples of to the contrary. But it is an undeniable possibility, and the fact that there are only about two months left in the season means that Rodriguez won’t have much runway to find his groove.
It also should be mentioned that, while Rodriguez’s 2023 numbers were excellent, his underlying stats paint a less rosy picture. He had a 3.66 FIP, 4.06 xFIP and 4.04 Statcast-expected ERA. Those numbers are solid, but also an indication that an ERA in the low-threes was not exactly a safe bet moving forward, injuries aside.
No matter what happens, it will be important to keep a larger perspective after Rodriguez’s season debut. It’s just one start.
3. Rodriguez is Diamondbacks X-factor, this year and beyond
While the Diamondbacks are running a franchise record payroll this year, that does not mean that they are well-positioned to absorb a bad contract. They already have one, it appears, in Jordan Montgomery, who has a 6.37 ERA in 16 starts after signing a last-minute deal with the Diamondbacks just before Opening Day. Montgomery’s deal at most spans two years. With Rodriguez, the Diamondbacks are locked in through 2027.
Rodriguez is an important piece for the Diamondbacks, not only for the rest of the 2024 season, but the seasons to follow. Bumgarner’s contract hindered the Diamondbacks from making other improvements. Greinke’s contract — even though he was quite good for most of it — had similar effects. It would be a tough blow to take on another contract of that nature.
On the other hand, Rodriguez has the potential to provide a major boost to a Diamondbacks team that has already won 22 of its 31 games.
Whatever happens, surely people won’t overreact to Rodriguez’s opening act on Wednesday night. (They definitely will.)
Top photo: Rob Schumacher/The Republic
