The Red Sox took an 8-0 loss to the Blue Jays Tuesday night, with Toronto’s Hyun-Jin Ryu going seven scoreless innings.
The Blue Jays tallied five runs off Rodriguez, as well as 11 hits, moving his May ERA to 6.00 after a strong April.
“Missing my spots,” Rodriguez said. “That’s what I think has been changing the last couple starts. It’s something, I need to work on it. I finally got my velocity back. It’s just working on hitting my spots.”
Rodriguez struggled with command all night, and has struggled mightily in his four starts in May.
“Command is not where he usually is, and that’s something that he needs – regardless of his stuff, if he’s throwing hard or his velocity is down,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “I think the cutter actually is bigger than usual. We’ll try to find out why. It’s actually playing like a hanging slider instead of him being sharp and dotting that pitch whenever he wants to. He has been able to elevate the last two starts but there has been a lot of contact. I think teams are doing a good job staying with him and going the other way. We’ll go back to the drawing board and see what we can do.”
The lefty tossed 87 pitches across five innings, and with the 24 cutters he threw, it did not like it’s usual self.
“I was feeling really good today,” Rodriguez said. “It was one of those days where I was feeling good in the bullpen and I thought I wasn’t going to get that result today. But it happens.
Rodriguez missed all of 2020 due to myocarditis, and missed the start of the season due to dead arm.
“For me, it’s just going to the bullpen, working these next four days and working on hitting my spots on all four pitches,” he added. “That’s it.”