Seems inconceivable now, but it was only a couple years ago in St. Louis that Richard Rodriguez stood at his Busch Stadium stall and was basically beating himself up. He'd just been bumped down and back from the minors. On merit. It was barely a week in Indianapolis, but it was a backward step, as he saw it, and he'd taken it badly.
And at the same time, he took it well.
"I love this team," he'd told me on that mid-May day in 2019. "I love my teammates. They all believe in me. They never say anything bad about me. They make me believe in myself."
Hmmmmmm ...
Crazy how a baseball script can flip, huh?
And that goes double, probably, when it comes to closer, the sport's most fickle yet celebrated single role.
On this Tuesday at PNC Park, he saved the Pirates' very-much-worth-saving 6-3 whipping of the White Sox with a 1-2-3, nine-pitch ninth. That brought his ninth save -- hey, the dude's had 10 whole chances to cap a W -- and it lowered his WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched) to 0.72, second-lowest of any closer across Major League Baseball, trailing only the Cubs' Craig Kimbrel, the crowning stat amid a 1.83 ERA, a .173 opponents' batting average, 25 strikeouts and three walks in 29 1/3 innings.
That's right, three walks.
He's one of the best relievers anywhere.
That began in the two-month 2020 season, when he stripped a four-pitch arsenal under Ray Searage to a standard fastball-slider combo. The sinker became a bit player, and the changeup was buried. Once circumstances presented the chance to close in the second of those months, he pounded and impressed management enough to earn a second look this past spring in Bradenton.
Which was exactly what he got when he showed up looking all long-haired, snarly and ... well, unlike anything of them could've expected based on the quiet, complex personality they'd experienced to that point.
What happened?
"I watch Pedro."
It's been far too long since I've been able to interview these athletes I cover, so I've been embracing most every chance now that one-on-ones are available before games at PNC Park. Rodriguez was my target on this Tuesday, hours before that save. I hoped to uncover whatever might've changed with him, whatever advice he might've received, whatever might've prompted ... all this.
And he came back with Pedro Martinez.
Not the Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro, not the childhood hero Pedro, but the MLB Network analyst Pedro, explaining that at one point early in the pandemic he'd heard Martinez speak passionately about how the hardest pitch to hit always has been a pinpoint fastball. Velocity be damned. Setup pitches and sequencing be damned, as well.
He relayed that early last summer to Oscar Marin, the new pitching coach, found plenty of buy-in -- Marin's tried to streamline most of his pitchers since his arrival -- and set his sights high.
Literally.
"His fastball goes up," Michael Perez, the backup catcher, told me after his round of batting practice.
So, I replied, he throws upstairs. The high, hard ones.
"No," Perez corrected, "it goes up."
Uh ...
"I don't know how," he'd add with a laugh. "Maybe it spins a lot. But if you're hitting or you're catching, you're not expecting it to go up, and it goes up."
All right, then.
The data doesn't lie: Rodriguez is throwing 87.8% four-seamers, 12.2% sliders, and 0% everything else. And here's the graphic illustration of every swing-and-miss he's gotten with his fastball this season to show what's going up:
As Perez put it, "They know what's coming. Everybody knows what's coming. They just can't hit it."
But why?
"I don't know."
He paused a moment, clearly searching for the right words in his second language, then added, "He's confident. He believes in his pitches."
Oh, right. That.
On this afternoon, I reminded Rodriguez of our talk that day in St. Louis. He remembered. Not just that exchange but all that was swirling around it, all that led to it. He'd seen himself as being consumed by pitching as if it were some high art. The setups, the sequencing and all that. He wasn't throwing 98, 99 mph like some, and he felt he'd need guile to get the ball by the batter.
That was obvious on the mound before that demotion, too. He'd fuss and fidget, huff and puff. When the manager came to take the ball, he appeared all too willing to hand it over.
"I think so much, you know?" he'd recall. "Everything was think, think, think."
The burden of the bright, busy mind, I joked.
"Ha! Yes, maybe. But not now."
He pointed to PNC Park's mound.
"We play Cleveland," he'd add, referring to the weekend series against the Indians, from whom the Pirates took two of three, both of which he finished in style. "I don't think about anything. Nothing. They call the pitch. I throw the pitch."
Confirmed.
"He hasn't shaken us off all year," Perez said, referring to himself and Jacob Stallings. "Not once."
"I feel very confident," Rodriguez added, then with a smile, "and very happy."
He's happy here, for sure. It's easy to tell on a daily basis that he feels even more strongly about those teammates who supported him in 2019 than he did then.
It's equally easy to tell, of course, that he might not be around much longer.
At age 31, Rodriguez has next to no chance of being part of the Pirates' 'next winning team,' to borrow the Ben Cherington phrase. And because he's a closer, there's a contrasting excellent chance a contender somewhere will acquire him in advance of the July 31 trade deadline. And because closers can be grossly overvalued in such exchanges -- imagine being the contender's GM and fearing the failure of getting that final out of a Game 7 -- there's a similar chance he'll net a premium price.
It might not feel that way when it happens, and it definitely won't feel that way the first time his successor at closer blows a save, but this is a success story and a half. For Rodriguez and the Pirates.
From the team perspective, it's a pitcher who improved here, not elsewhere. That's a credit to Marin, Stallings, Perez and all concerned, not just the pitcher. The best value a low-spending team like the Pirates can create is by building up their own assets. And, with all due respect to the outstanding summers being had by Adam Frazier and Bryan Reynolds, no one's made a higher climb on this roster -- based on where he began -- than Rodriguez.
From the organizational perspective, ideally, it'll be a trade that brings back real talent within an age/experience context that'll match that of Ke'Bryan Hayes, Reynolds and other younger players.
From Rodriguez's perspective ...
"I love this team. I love my teammates. This is my home," he'd reply when I broached that topic. "I'm not thinking about anything."
Hey, why mess with what works?