Boston Red Sox: Breaking down their 2021 pitching staff

What’s interesting is the breakdown of guys who the eye test says are really good but also whom the data does not particularly favor, and the exact opposite of that where the eye test is murky but data says otherwise.

Statcast does not like Eduardo Rodriguez or Nathan Eovaldi yet we all know they’re very good pitchers when they’re on. E-Rod, in particular is a head-scratcher in that his pitches do not necessarily have anything special on them yet he still manages to find strikeouts and get swings and misses.

Rodriguez clocked into the 33rd percentile in fastball spin rate the last time we saw him pitch in 2019, yet he shot up in categories like exit velo (95th percentile), hard hit % (92nd), xwOBA and xERA (79th), xBA (81st), xSLG (78th), and barrel % (74th) from where he was most of his early career at about league average.

This is a guy who is clearly learning to pitch rather than simply throw since his ball is naturally not very prone to sophisticated movement or velocity, though we’ve seen E-Rod get his ball up to the high 90s at times.

Rodriguez is settling into being a stable left-hander who mixes his pitches very well and knows how to outsmart hitters. He doesn’t need high 90s velocity but can rather sit low to mid 90s. The question with E-Rod this year is how is he going to come back after missing 2020? Much like how Chris Sale has missed a chunk of time, Rodriguez will have something to prove having not seen him since two seasons ago.

And being that his “stuff” isn’t particularly fantastic, the long layoff could prove detrimental to his game if he cannot pick up where he left off in 2019.

Nathan Eovaldi is in a similar boat……..kind of. I don’t find him to be quite as gifted in the art of pitching as someone like Rodriguez, but he’s most definitely a better “thrower” with more weapons at his disposal.

The problem with Nate is just that, however. He’s a “thrower.” And yes, he sits in the high-90s to triple digits, but at the same time, he generates about the same 33rd percentile spin as E-Rod only without the luxury of being able to avoid damage by hitters.

Another interesting thing is that his control is all over the place in many regards. Take a look at his BB% from 2015-2020. In ’15 and ’16, he was at about league average and had his moments of struggling to hit the zone consistently. In ’18, he looked as though he completely fixed his issues. Then in ’19, he plummeted to the bottom ten percentile in baseball in BB%. And last year, he brought it back up to the 98th percentile.

What’s more consistent with him is his propensity to find the sweet spot on bats, meaning his barrel, exit velo, and expected averages tend to stay in the lower echelons of baseball. Nate is wild at times in and out of the zone, but no matter what, guys always have seemed to be able to lock onto him consistently through the years.