Video: Is There Reason to Doubt Emmanuel Rodriguez?

[Theodore Tollefson]

While Jamie is a huge E-Rod fan, Jeremy has his doubts.

View full video

[Linus]

There is a reason to doubt every prospect. They are all suspects until they are not. 

[Dman]

Rodriguez is a polarizing prospect.  On one hand he appears patient at the plate and walks at an almost 15-20% clip.  On the other hand he K's about 30 percent of the time.  I have seen him have some really ugly plate appearances and some great ones.  He hits everything hard but he swings through a lot of pitches as well.  There definitely are still questions.

Still I'm just not as pessimistic as Jeremy is.  That walk rate should serve him well and he has time to get the K rate under more control as he is only 20 and hasn't played all that many games just yet.  This was his first full season played injury free and he led his entire league in OPS as a 20 year old which is better than the Dodgers uber prospect Dalton Rushing who is 22 years old granted Rushing was right behind him key word is behind though.

For as maddening as he can be to watch taking strike three calls and swinging through ton's of pitches he has an elite bat.  AA should be a better barometer of where he is at as he will face even more breaking stuff.  Still it seems hard to be down on a 20 year old who led high A in OPS despite some obvious flaws in his game.  Despite the K rate I am still a believer.

[tony&rodney]

I have not seen Erod play in person, only via milb.com.

Something that seems to happen with his swings relates to discipline. Emmanuel does swing at strikes but quite often takes a wild hack where it seems he is hoping for a 500 foot homer. He also still gets fooled by breaking pitches. Rodriguez plays the game with a little jazz in his movements. Perhaps he can improve the contact within the strike zone next year. However, I have had a few thoughts similar to Jeremy's concerns about the swings and misses too. Next year will be a huge barometer for Erod and we shall see how he develops with swing discipline.