Despite efforts to re-sign the lefty, the Eduardo Rodriguez tenure with the Boston Red Sox is over. It’s reported that E-Rod received a 5-year, $77 million contract with the Detroit Tigers. The $15+ million per year contract makes some sense for the relatively young lefty who has been up and down over his career in Boston, but has shown promise throughout. It’s probably in E-Rod’s best interest to get a change of scenery and see if he can finally put it all together and be consistently a top-end rotation talent.
After a career year in 2019, E-Rod sat out 2020 with myocarditis which emerged following a COVID-19 diagnosis. Thankfully, he was able to get back on the mound in 2021 and once again showed some flashes of being a top-end rotation arm. He also continued his consistent inconsistency and ended the year with a 13-8 record and a 4.74 ERA. He was able to rebound after building his ERA up over 6 in June thanks to his final 5 appearances of the regular season in which he didn’t allow more than 2 earned runs.
After a tough first outing in the postseason, E-Rod bounced back and finished his career in Boston with 2 strong outings against the Tampa Bay Rays and Houston Astros, striking out 13 and allowing 5 earned runs over 11 innings. He declined his $18.4 million option to stay with Boston for 2022 in order to try and get some long-term stability and that bet paid off. While the annual salary is $3 million less than his option, he is now guaranteed a really solid salary until age 33.
I’m happy for him given his health struggles in 2020. His future as an MLB player was hanging in the balance and it was a really great story to watch him rebound and turn in his second highest innings total and games total this past season. That being said, I’m not sure I would have paid $15.4 million per year for his level of inconsistency. I’m not going to dig in again, but if you’re curious on my feelings about E-Rod, I wrote this back in September. To me, he’s a middle to back-end of the rotation talent at this point and the Red Sox should be able to find a replacement.
The Red Sox are obviously in need of starting rotation help going into 2022 and have several decisions to make on whether to move certain pitchers into the rotation (i.e. Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock). They reportedly had offered a multi-year deal to E-Rod, so I’m sure to some degree were waiting for this chip to fall. A quick resolution to the Eduardo Rodriguez situation will help them move on and pursue other opportunities.