We have a full 15-game slate on tap for Tuesday’s MLB action, and plenty of interesting matchups to look forward to. My favorite angle is in the matchup between the Oakland Athletics and Baltimore Orioles, let’s dive in!
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Grayson Rodriguez is highly regarded as one of, if not the best pitching prospect currently in the game. The 6’5″ 23-year-old made his debut last week against the Texas Rangers, his favorite childhood team. His outing began rocky but ended in 5 innings of 2-run ball with 5 strikeouts recorded. The talented right-hander averages 96.5 MPH on his fastball, a pitch he threw 49.4% of the time in his debut. His slider is nearly 14 MPH slower than his fastball and in his first start he was able to generate whiffs on 50% of his thrown sliders. His overall whiff rate ranks 78th percentile so far and now draws a favorable matchup against the Oakland Athletics. This season against right-handed pitching Oakland has the league’s 2nd highest strikeout rate through their first 258 PA. Their projected lineup for today shows 7 batters with league average or higher strikeout rates against right-handed pitching dating back to last season.
The Athletics offense has been lackluster to begin the season. They rank just 28th in runs per game and have very few power threats in their lineup. Against right-handers Oakland is only 29th in OBP, 28th in OPS and have a wRC+ of 69. Shohei Ohtani, Shane Bieber, Zach Eflin and Drew Rasmussen have easily surpassed this mark against Oakland from the right side already this season. Workload is always the concern with young pitchers, and pitchers in general during April. That being said, Grayson faced 20 batters in his debut across 83 pitches and should see no fewer than that in this matchup. In the spring Rodriguez racked up a 1.24 K/IP despite some struggling at times. I love that the Oakland bats have yet to see his filthy stuff and his strikeout potential is too good to pass up in this matchup.
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