McAdam: A 20-win season is in reach for Eduardo Rodriguez

From the start of the season -- in fact, especially from the start -- the Red Sox rotation has been one massive disappointment.

Chris Sale endured his worst season in the big leagues before going down with a season-ending elbow injury. David Price began well but has saw his year nosedive in July and has been interrupted by injury on three occasions. Nathan Eovaldi missed half the season. Rick Porcello sports an inflated ERA and is among the league leaders in homers allowed.

Eduardo Rodriguez stands alone as the exception. Rodriguez leads the staff in every significant category from innings pitched to ERA to WHIP.

Moreover, with as many as four or five starts remaining, including Monday night, Rodriguez stands a chance to win 20 games for the first time in his career. He brings A 17-5 record into the series finale with the Yankees.



In recent years, starting pitcher wins have been devalued with the realization that they don't always provide a telling snapshot of a pitcher's year.

And yet 20-win seasons are seldom fluky occurrences. Over the course of better than 30 starts, too much has to go right.

Three more wins and Rodriguez will become just the fifth Red Sox pitcher this century to post a 2o-win season and just the second in the last 12 seasons.

"If the 20 comes, it comes,'' said Rodriguez. "That's something that I can't control. I can go out there and throw nine innings the rest of my starts and not know whether I'm going to win or not. My goal this year is just to go out there and be available to pitch the whole season, which is what I'm doing right now. I want to finish strong.

"If the 20 comes, it comes. But I just wanted to make more than 30 starts and hopefully get to 200 innings (he's at a team-leading 172.2 innings).''

It may well be that the innings total is Rodriguez's top accomplishment, especially given the underperformance -- and at times, unavailability -- of others in the rotation. While Sale, Price and Eovaldi were preserved in spring training with an eye toward having them at full strength later in the year, the trio seldom provided length.

Rodriguez, who previously had the reputation as the least efficient pitcher on the staff, has become the team workhorse. Twelve times in his first 29 starts, he has gotten at least one out in the seventh inning and he's thrown seven innings in three of his last four outings.

"Probably after the first month of the season,'' said pitching coach Dana LeVangie, "Eddie has been one of the better pitchers in the big leagues. The season he's had speaks to his maturity, his consistency, his routine. He's taken a huge step forward this year and having a chance to win 20 games just speaks volumes about how much he's grown up.

"It would be pretty special. It's been a disappointing season (for the team), but that doesn't take away from what the guy's' done, taking his turn every five days. It's been fun to watch.''

The Red Sox noticed a difference in Rodriguez as soon as he reported to spring training. In addition to being healthy, Rodriguez had dropped weight over the winter and came in motivated. He was pushed by his rotation-mates, each of whom has adopted a big brother role with the lefty.

Manager Alex Cora was publicly critical of Rodriguez following an outing in Port St. Lucie, when Rodriguez failed to pitch aggressively enough to go sufficiently deep into the game. It may have only been a Grapefruit League outing, but Cora's point registered.

In addition to routinely going deeper into games, Rodriguez also developed a hard curveball -- to go with his plus changeup, cutter and fastball. The arrival of a fourth pitch, said LeVangie, gives Rodriguez "a chance to be a truly elite pitcher for a long period of time.''

Among his teammates in the rotation, Porcello has won 22 games (in 2016) and Price won 20 while with Tampa Bay. Sale, for all his domination in past seasons, has never reached the milestone.

Getting there and joining two of his mentors would be an accomplishment in itself and offer concrete evidence that he's arrived in an exclusive club.

"If I get it, I'm going to be really happy,'' he Rodriguez, "because that's something that I've never done. If I get to that point, that would be great.''