MLB Daily: Eduardo Rodriguez Rides to the Rescue for the Red Sox; Another A-Rod Milestone

Welcome to MLB Daily on a Friday. We made it, gang! 

Help on the Way: For a team that made, colloquially speaking, a zillion moves in the winter could the Boston Red Sox have any less juice — again colloquially speaking — at the moment? The supposedly marquee Boston Red Sox are just another boring, sub-500 baseball team. Hey, this is perfectly fine by me. I’m still sore over the 2013 ALCS and outside of the “Nation,” few baseball tears will be shed for the Red Sox.

But this current team is so very, ahem, pedestrian, despite all the glowing projections.

David Ortiz — who few will shed tears for — is the easy scapegoat at the moment due to a slow start. The less said of the pitching staff, the better. Consider me someone who is a fan of Rick Porcello, but didn’t think he’d morph into the Cy Young version of Brandon Webb at Fenway Park. Clay Buchholz is who he is at this point — a below average Major League starter.

Maybe the Red Sox get a pass since the baseball media likes Ben Cherington? Right now, the way Boston constructed its starting staff isn’t panning out. The Red Sox did get a glimmer of hope last night in Texas thanks to 22-year-old lefty Eduardo Rodriguez, acquired from Baltimore last year for Andrew Miller. Rodriguez touched 96 mph with his fastball, mixing in a change and slider on his way to seven strikeouts. He retired the first 14 of 15 batters he faced, as Boston won 5-1.

John Farrell showed enough faith in him to let him throw — gasp — 105 pitches and go into the eighth inning.

The wise decision is to take a wait-and-see approach with Rodriguez. First starts can be deceiving since hitters don’t have a “book” on pitchers. That said, Rodriguez’s delivery to the plate from the left side was impressive and reminded me some of Chris Sale, in terms of a lanky lefty delivery; granted Sale is more of a side-arm slinger.

For one night Rodriguez shut down the hottest offense in the league and gave the Red Sox their first actual highlight of the 2015 season, albeit with three days remaining in May.

Welcome Back: Josh Hamilton hit a double in the Red Sox game, his first game back in Arlington in a Rangers uniforms since the trade from the Angels. Fans cheered. Hamilton smiled. All seemed to be forgiven after the acrimonious departure.

Fans are fickle and have short memories. Whatever Texas gets from Hamilton going forward is a bonus.

More history for A-Rod: Another day, another milestone for Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez. His sac-fly against Oakland last night that plated Brett Gardner tied him with Barry Bonds at 1,996 for second all-time. It happened after 11 p.m. on the East Coast so I don’t think ESPN or anyone else broke into live coverage of this historic moment.

RBIs are a stat which has fallen out of relevancy, regardless, and didn’t become an “official” stat until the early part of the 20th century.

This nifty move at the plate by A-Rod was much more compelling than a fly-out to right.

Crushed: Jung Ho Kang launched a ball into the left-center bleachers at Petco Park — no small feat.

The Korean shortstop is now batting .308/.371/.462 in 104 at bats — a MASSIVE upgrade over Jordy Mercer, who amassed a sub .500 OPS in 100+ plate appearances.

Pet Peeves: Maybe you mellow with age, but lately I’m much more chilled out when I see things that are wrong or annoy me or whatever. Just the other day I came across a baseball blog that used “overtime” in a headline. Hey, live and let live is a much less stressful policy.

Jeopardy!’s clue writers on the other hand in a category about baseball stadiums … well …

Marge Schott never owned the Reds when they played at Great American Ballpark. This is splitting hairs, but I thought you were better than this, Jeopardy!

Oh well. No harm, really.

K-Man: If you traded Corey Kluber in a fantasy league after a slow start — joke is on you. The Cleveland righty struck out 13 in Seattle last night. He’s up to 96 in 73 innings. Nice job by the Sport’s Time Ohio graphic/marketing department to get the Circle K to sponsor strikeouts. It always reminds me of this because I am a simple man.

This & That: This struck me as odd, last night there weren’t any 7 p.m. games and only one at 8 p.m.. … Jayson Werth has a wrist injury and will be out until August. … The White Sox and Orioles split a double-header, a make-up for the postponed games in Baltimore. … Thank you for joining us, daily, for another week of fun?

[Working for the Weekend!]