Minor league baseball has returned after a 20-month absence — a few teams lighter than when we last saw it, and without the traditional league names that the sport has had since the 1800s, but at least it’s back. I attended my first minor league game since 2019 as the Aberdeen IronBirds, now the High-A affiliate of the Orioles, visited the Wilmington Blue Rocks, still High A but now affiliated with the Nationals, on Tuesday night.
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Grayson Rodriguez, the Orioles’ No. 3 prospect and their first-round pick in 2018, came out firing bullets, hitting 99 mph seven times in the first inning and sitting 96-99 through his four innings of work. He was blowing it by Wilmington hitters, getting some incredibly late, awkward swings on the pitch. His fastball command was below-average, and he wasn’t in the zone with the pitch as much as you’d like. He was fastball-heavy in the outing, as he should have been, with a curveball that was well below-average in the first but improved as he went along, and a changeup that he telegraphed a little out of his hand but that has good separation and fade to it; the curveball isn’t that deceptive or tight, but he did land it for strikes after the first inning. I don’t think either offspeed pitch was average in this particular outing, though.
Rodriguez takes a huge stride towards the plate in his delivery, and while his arm isn’t always quite on time, it’s close enough that I don’t think it’ll be a long-term issue for him as a starter. He still has a slight pause in his delivery, but it’s smoother than it was when I last saw him, again, not enough to be a real concern about him as a starter. What he does need to do in future outings is improve his offspeed stuff — get more power to the breaking ball, make sure he’s not giving away the changeup from the way he releases it. And the Orioles will, at some point, have to let him go deeper into games; Rodriguez threw just 63 pitches before he was pulled, which is a really short leash even for a first start. He’s still gone 90 or more pitches just three times in his brief pro career. I’m all for protecting young arms, but there’s also a benefit to going through a lineup at least twice, which Rodriguez didn’t do. His outlook is still the same, a potential No. 2 starter who’s built to handle that kind of workload.
• Wilmington started right-hander Jackson Rutledge, the Nationals’ first-round pick in 2019 and their No. 2 prospect, all 6’8″ of him, and he was reasonably impressive in his own right even if he couldn’t match Rodriguez’s velocity. Rutledge was at 93-97 mph and pitched entirely off his fastball, without any offspeed pitches at all until the second inning. He eventually showed four pitches in total, with an average to slightly above-average slider at 83-85 that wasn’t as good as expected, but a changeup at 85-86 that flashed plus and exceeded expectations. If that latter pitch becomes more consistent for him — the Nats had him work on it at the alternate site in 2020 — he’s more likely to remain a starter, and to become an above-average one.
Despite his size, Rutledge’s arm action is extremely short, and that’s come up as a concern from scouts when discussing his eventual role. We have seen pitchers switch to shorter arm actions in the last few years and become more effective as starters without any new arm problems, though and while Rutledge’s is shorter than most, I don’t see anything here to say he can’t repeat it or start, especially since he’s mostly on time. The one delivery hiccup here is that he starts on the extreme third base side of the rubber and comes straight down the hill, rather than landing more toward the plate, which could make it difficult for him to get to his glove side, but that’s a simple adjustment to make it if becomes a problem. He looks like a future mid-rotation workhorse assuming the changeup keeps progressing.
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• Of the various position-player prospects in the game, Joey Ortiz, Baltimore’s fourth-round pick in 2019, appears to have made some significant adjustments in the nearly two years since we last saw him in games. Ortiz was a very light-hitting shortstop with plus defense when the O’s drafted him, hitting just .241/.345/.267 with 3 extra-base hits in 56 games in short-season ball after he signed. He hit three balls very hard on Tuesday night for a single, a double, and an outfielder-assisted “triple” that would probably have been a home run in most ballparks. He’s gotten stronger and his swing has some more loft to it now for line-drive power. When I saw him in 2019, he couldn’t touch velocity, but on Tuesday, he was on the fastball, and struggled with breaking stuff down and away from right-handers, striking out in his other two plate appearances on essentially the same pitch from two different pitchers. With his defensive ability, he doesn’t have to hit a ton to be a real prospect, and these adjustments look like they’ll get him there.
• Ortiz started the game at second base to accommodate Adam Hall at shortstop, moving over when Hall came out after his fourth at-bat. Hall was overpowered by fastballs in his first at-bat, striking out to lead off the game, but adjusted enough to put the ball in play three more times, eventually singling on a hard ground ball up the middle off a 92 mph fastball and showing 60 speed. Hall didn’t get to play at the alternate site last summer due to COVID-19 restrictions, and he’s likely to be further behind than his peers coming into this year as a result, so it may take some time for him to readjust to seeing good velocity.
• The more notable prospects in the Blue Rocks’ lineup, shortstop Yasel Antuna and catcher Ismael Pineda, both went 0-for-4, with Antuna striking out three times, twice swinging through fastballs. Antuna had just six at-bats in 2019 around injuries, all on a rehab assignment in the GCL, and his last game in a full-season league was July 19, 2018, when he hurt his elbow and required Tommy John surgery, so he ought to be rustier than most. Pineda did make one very strong throw to second base and seemed fine catching Rutledge’s stuff.
(Photo of Rutledge in spring training: Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)
