'Best start that I ever had': E-Rod flirts with perfecto

BALTIMORE -- While pitching for the Red Sox for six seasons in the American League East, left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez had tremendous success in baffling Orioles hitters.

Now in his second campaign with the Tigers, Rodriguez delivered what he felt was his best start ever on Sunday, continuing his dominance against the team that signed him out of Venezuela in 2010 and gave him his first contract.

In a 2-1 loss in 10 innings on Sunday afternoon at Camden Yards, Rodriguez did not allow Baltimore a baserunner until the seventh inning, retiring the first 20 batters he faced. Ryan Mountcastle’s clean single to left-center field with two outs in the seventh was the Orioles' only hit off the southpaw, as Rodriguez came within seven outs of a perfect game.

“I tried to throw a changeup down,” Rodriguez said of his battle with Mountcastle. “It was a good-located changeup, down and away. He made a good swing. He got a base hit. I was thinking to bounce it. On the video you can see [catcher Jake Rogers] was calling it down. I think it was good. Those are the at-bats that we need to have and get a guy out."

Rodriguez picked up six strikeouts, throwing 95 pitches (65 strikes). It was his second consecutive dominant start: he went eight scoreless innings against Cleveland on April 18, picking up 10 strikeouts without walking a batter. He was only the third Detroit pitcher to do so, joining Max Scherzer (2012) and “Wild Bill” Donovan (1908).

"He was incredible,” said manager A.J. Hinch. “He had quick, efficient innings early. He was pounding the strike zone. He had all of his pitches. He was literally almost perfect all the way up until the end. We get starting pitching performances like that, we are going to win more games. Obviously, he set a great tone. We just didn't score enough for him."

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Rodriguez became the first Tigers pitcher to retire the first 20-plus batters of a game since Jordan Zimmermann against the Blue Jays on March 28, 2019. Rodriguez said this start was the best he’d ever made.

"There was a no-hitter that I took through eight [innings] in Oakland, but that was a no-hitter,” he said. “This was a perfect game. I would say that this was the best start that I ever had."

Baltimore came back to win the game after Rodriguez’s departure, sweeping the three-game set. The Tigers have lost four in a row.

Also per Elias, Rodriguez was the first Tigers pitcher to throw seven-plus shutout innings with no walks and six-plus strikeouts in two consecutive starts. Jacob deGrom was the last pitcher to accomplish the feat, on Sept. 14 and 20, 2019. Clayton Kershaw is the only pitcher to make three such starts in a row, doing so from July 8-23, 2015.

Despite the no-decision, the 30-year-old is 10-0 with a 1.56 ERA in his past 12 starts against the Orioles dating back to 2018, allowing only 13 earned runs over 75 innings.

Overall, Rodriguez has a 2.79 career ERA in 24 appearances (22 starts) against Baltimore, and he has recorded 135 strikeouts in 132 1/3 innings against the Birds. He was traded from Baltimore to Boston on July 31, 2014, for left-hander Andrew Miller.

"Rodriguez seems to always give us trouble, and he's a really, really good starter. He was so good today,” said Orioles manager Brandon Hyde. “Give credit to him. I thought he was on both corners. We didn't square many balls up against him. [Austin] Hays hit a ball hard a couple times. [James] McCann flew out kind of deep one time. But besides that, there was not much hard contact. We had trouble with him."

The left-hander struck out six Orioles with what Hinch deemed an “unpredictable” mix of his fastball, cutter and changeup. The Orioles reached the outfield just five times on flyouts before Mountcastle’s single.

As Rodriguez kept retiring opposing hitters, his teammates could tell that he was making his way towards baseball history.

“You start to feel it out there,” said right fielder Matt Vierling, who scored the Tigers' lone run in the eighth. “I was telling Riley [Greene], ‘We are diving on absolutely everything you could possibly dive on.’ We recognize it. I'm not saying in a regular game that you wouldn't dive for everything, but you’re a little more apt to go after something like that [when] he's got that going."