Ryan Garcia
The pressure of playing for the New York Yankees is often described as a unqiue experience that not every player can handle.
Times are changing though; the pressure that reverberates throughout the Bronx is still there, but the emergence of the World Baseball Classic provides another big event outside of MLB’s postseason.
Elmer Rodriguez would take the ball for Puerto Rico at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, pitching under the lights in a must-win game for the sea of Boricua baseball fans.
Puerto Rico’s team isn’t as stacked as previous years, but they’ve gotten out to a 2-0 start and will play an undefeated Cuban team that advanced all the way to the semi-finals in the 2023 WBC.
A rain delay would push his start back by over an hour, leaving the 22-year-old to have a flurry of emotions swelling in his stomach, and in a rainy night, he showed the Yankees that he can bring it while facing serious adversity.
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How Should the Yankees Read Elmer Rodriguez’s Wild Start For Puerto Rico
Elmer Rodriguez’s heart was likely racing by the time 6 PM hit, and I don’t imagine that feeling subsided as he waited for over an hour while it rained in San Juan.
A 22-year-old from Puerto Rico who had been dreaming of this very moment for years, his excitement boiled over as he fired six-straight pitches out of zone.
It’s a classic situation where a young starter is unable to control their emotions ahead of a big game and they end up sputtering out in the start, this is a common phenomenon and Rodriguez seemed headed for that fate.
Following a mound visit to calm his nerves, Rodriguez would retire the next three hitters in order, but more hurdles would affect him throughout this outing.
Rain began to pour down again during the second and third innings where the right-hander had issued two more walks, but he’d find ways to stomp out these rallies with soft grounders and the occassional strikeout.
Five of the six batted balls that Elmer Rodriguez allowed were groundballs with negative launch angles, so while he had an abysmal 24% Zone% without inducing many chases, when he got swings they often resulted in harmless batted balls.
Not having your sharpest command while also pitching in muddy conditions with occassional rain can absolutely ruin a young pitcher in the biggest start of their life, but none of those things caused Rodriguez to collapse in San Juan.
Instead he threw up zeroes and helped Puerto Rico limit a red-hot Cuban offense to just one run in their crucial victory which sent them into the WBC quarterfinals.
For those who don’t care much for the tournament it’s easy to dismiss this game as an exhibition and wonder how this can even compare to the pressure of being a Yankee, but I can speak from personal experience as a Dominican-American.
I know just how demanding the city of New York can be, and you could argue its population only elevates its passion and intensity when it comes to sport.
With that being said, for Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and various other Latin groups in this tournament, winning this event is a comparable or greater honor than watching their favorite MLB team win a World Series.
“I’ve played in five World Series and I don’t know if it’s because of what’s across my chest, but the Classic feels above that” – Kiké Hernandez (Via Miguel Lugo on X/Twitter)
We cannot know exactly what Elmer Rodriguez was feeling, but one could rightfully assume his decision to participate in the event rather than staying back to compete for a rotation spot means he really cares about the WBC.
Getting to see how he handles the emotion, passion, anxiety, and outside factors that all mixed together to spell disaster for Rodriguez is valuable information, and I think he passed this test.
Not that I had heard any doubt about his makeup or overall characters, but if any scouts wondered whether he could handle pressure or not, I think last night showed a lot of maturity.
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