Mastrodonato: Over-hyped Eduardo Rodriguez departs the Red Sox having never met lofty expectations 

When a 21-year-old Eduardo Rodriguez entered the 2014 season in the Baltimore Orioles farm system, Baseball America projected him as someone with a “No. 3 starter ceiling.”

If everything went perfectly in his development, he could be a mid-rotation pitcher.

Rodriguez had a good minor league season in ’14, when he got traded to the Red Sox for Andrew Miller in July, and arrived in Boston the following spring with a completely new set of projections.

“Among the Sox’s cluster of upper level starting prospects, Rodriguez is the one with clear top-of-the-rotation stuff,” Baseball America wrote. “Rodriguez sits at 92-94 mph but regularly touched 96 and 97 in his outings with the Red Sox. He complements that with a killer changeup … If his slider develops to at least average, his potential is immense. ‘That kid can be Johan Santana Part 2,’ one evaluator said. ‘If his breaking ball improves one tick, he’s going to be outstanding.’”

Projections on prospects change rapidly in baseball. This happens everywhere. But the over-hyping of prospects in Boston seems to be as aggressive as it is anywhere else. And as Rodriguez departed the Red Sox this week after signing a five-year, $77 million deal with the Detroit Tigers, it’s easy to wonder: why didn’t Rodriguez ever reach his perceived potential in Boston?

There are a few reasons that stand out, primarily his frequent knee injuries and consistent issues with pitch-tipping. The pitch-tipping seemed particularly frustrating for the Red Sox given they were prevalent from the beginning of his career in 2015, when the Sox excused it as a mistake due to youth and inexperience, all the way through the end in 2021.

Rodriguez contributed to the hype with an impressive big league debut on May 28, 2015, against the Rangers, throwing 7 2/3 scoreless innings while striking out seven and allowing just three hits.

“He was outstanding,” former manager John Farrell said that night. “Very impressive. Poised… To see the middle of the order, the way they reacted to his fastball, it’s got good life, he’s got deception in his delivery. Just a very impressive outing all the way around.

“You look at the overall package of ability, including the poise, it’s an impressive 22-year-old pitcher.”

After three big league starts, he had accumulated 21 strikeouts in 20 2/3 innings with a 0.44 ERA.

“This was no ordinary debut,” wrote the Herald.

“Nothing short of historically amazing,” wrote the Globe.

Just like Clay Buchholz, Rodriguez had set a high bar that he would never live up to.

While most in Boston were quickly projecting Rodriguez into the next Jon Lester, David Price or someone even better, there was but one muted voice: former general manager Ben Cherington.

“​​He’s going to make his next start, I don’t think we need to get too much further beyond that,” Cherington said after Rodriguez’s impressive debut. “But he’s certainly throwing the ball well. He looks like someone who can help us win games.”

Three months later, Cherington was stripped of his power and essentially pushed out of the organization to make room for new head of baseball operations, Dave Dombrowski.

Under Dombrowski, the Rodriguez hype train was back on the tracks.

“You look at Rodriguez pitch – I joked with John Farrell when I talked to him last night, ‘Gee, it looks like we’ll win a lot of games when we throw Rodriguez in 162,’” Dombrowski said in his first press conference that summer. “I don’t mean that as anything about any of the other pitchers, but he’s got a chance to be a No. 1-type of pitcher.”

The hype was consistent and endless. Rodriguez could be a star, an ace, a guy who leads the starting rotation of a team good enough to make a World Series run.

When manager Alex Cora saw him in spring training of 2019, he said he “really is in the best shape of his life.”

Chris Sale taught him how to throw a better slider and camp was abuzz with talk about Rodriguez having a breakout season. But Cora hesitated, noting, “Sometimes he gets caught up on who he wants to be. He wants to be Chris (Sale) one day, and Rick (Porcello) the next day, and David (Price) the next outing. We want him to be Eduardo. Eduardo is a good big league pitcher.”

It turned out to be Rodriguez’s best season as he went 19-6 with a 3.81 ERA and 213 strikeouts with a league-high 75 walks in 203 1/3  innings.

Now heading to Detroit, the 29-year-old lefty finished his Red Sox career with a 64-39 record and a 4.16 ERA.

It’s hard to escape the feeling of disappointment. That’s what happens when a player gets over-hyped too early in his career. So many of us saw his stuff and got carried away projecting what he could be if he put it all together.

It was a very good six-year stint, but not a great one.

Baseball America’s original projection in 2014 was accurate: Rodriguez reached his ceiling as a No. 3 starter.