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The talent is there Tony Gwynn Jersey , but he needs to refine his approach."Welcome to Over the Monster’s One Big Question series. For those unfamiliar, this is something of a season roster preview where over the next 40(ish) (week)days we’ll be taking a look at each player on the 40-man roster prior to the season. If changes are made to the roster between now and Opening Day, we’ll cover the newly added players. Rather than previewing what to expect in a general sense, the goal of this series is to find one overarching question for each player heading into the coming season. We’ll go one-by-one alphabetically straight down the roster, and today we talk about Eduardo Rodriguez.The Question: Is Eduardo Rodriguez going to finally trust his stuff?I’ve definitely mentioned this at least a few times in the past, but as someone who writes about the Red Sox on a regular basis Eduardo Rodriguez is one of my favorite players on the team. He is just a fascinating pitcher with constantly evolving questions, undeniable talent and seemingly never-ending quests for growth. As a fan, however, he is among the most frustrating players on the team. We know is a good pitcher, and all things considered he’s been successful in the early parts of his career. He’s certainly worthy of his rotation spot on a very good team. Even with those results, though, it’s impossible to watch him and not think about how much better he can, and probably should, be.There’s just clearly another level to his game that the southpaw just hasn’t been able to reach to this point. Obviously this is something we’ve been saying about him for a few years now, which just adds to the frustration. It can get tiring as a fan to continue waiting for the so-called “leap”. At a certain point, a player simply is what he has shown himself to be, and potential becomes less and less attainable the longer a player goes without reaching it. I wouldn’t say the 25-year-old (he’ll be 26 shortly after Opening Day) has gotten to that point just yet, but he’s probably closer than we want to admit. If he’s going to get to that next level, he simply needs to trust the stuff he possesses.Photo by Elsa/Getty ImagesLike I said at the start, Rodriguez has been good in his career and the lefty is coming off the best season of his career. In 2018 he made 27 appearances (23 starts) for the Red Sox, missing a big chunk of the second half due to injury. Over 129 2鈦? innings of work, he pitched to a solid 3.82 ERA (85 ERA-) Dave Winfield Jersey , 3.65 FIP (87 FIP-) and a 3.77 DRA (84 DRA-). In other words, he was well above-average in a three of these metrics. Among the 116 pitchers with at least 120 innings last year, he ranked 35th, 30th and 39th, respectively, in those three park-adjusted categories. The Red Sox will take that from a guy who is either their fourth or fifth starter, depending on how you view someone like Rick Porcello.The reason behind the success he’s had to this point is pretty clear. He has damn good stuff, and not in the way Joe Kelly had good stuff a few years ago. Rodriguez misses bats and when he’s really on you see easily why people see the ceiling they say he has. He’s progressively tallied higher and higher strikeout rates over his career, culminating in a 26.4 percent rate in 2018. When you see the stuff in action, it’s not hard to see how it works so well. The lefty works off a big, mid-90s fastball and pairs it with a nasty changeup and a cutter that he started working in a lot more in 2018. All of these pitches can get outs, with the changeup being easily the most impressive pitch.Don’t let the bullpen overshadow how great this rotation could bePhoto by Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesWith all of those positives, it’s easy to wonder why he isn’t more consistent and why he isn’t an even bigger part of this rotation. The answer is simple, as we all know. Rodriguez is so frustrating because he spends so much of his time nibbling around the edges of the strike zone. That leads to a few more walks than you’d like — his 8.1 percent walk rate in 2018 certainly isn’t terrible, but it could be better — and more importantly it leads to high pitch counts and short outings. In 2018, seven of his 23 starts lasted five or fewer innings with only nine lasting at least six and none getting through seven. Furthermore, the lefty reached full counts in a little over 19 percent of his at bats in 2018, compared to a rate just under 14 percent among all American League pitchers. All of this led to Alex Cora calling out the lefty following his most recent spring training outing. Rodriguez, judging by the box score, did fine in this game, but Cora shared the same frustration as many of us. The manager expressed disappointment that Rodriguez still isn’t using his stuff to attack opponents, and indicated that it’s time for him to “step up.” It’s not the first time Cora has tried to publicly motivate the lefty either Rollie Fingers Jersey , sharing similar sentiments towards the end of last year. To Rodriguez’s credit, he responded well to the criticism. Now, it’s time for him to respond well on the diamond.Photo by Gary A. Vasquez - Pool/Getty ImagesAs Cora alludes to, the solution to the efficiency woes are pretty simple: Attack hitters. The manager touches on all of this, but it’s really amazing that he doesn’t attack more. As we talked about above, Rodriguez has good enough stuff to get away with attacking his opponents. Among the 147 pitchers with at least 1500 pitches thrown in 2018, the Red Sox lefty ranked 39th in swinging strike rate. Despite the stuff, Rodriguez was all the way down at 118th in zone rate. You can succeed without hitting the zone — Patrick Corbin was dead last in zone rate last year and he just signed a $140 million contract — but you need hitters to swing at the bad pitches. Rodriguez was towards the middle of the pack in O_Swing rate last year. When batters aren’t chasing as much as you’d like, you need to come back to them and challenge them with strikes to get them back in the swinging mindset.At this point, the task is clear and everyone is aware of it. Rodriguez needs to trust his stuff, attack hitters and make them beat him. There will be times he’ll be beaten, but he has enough talent that he’ll win the battle more than often enough. He knows what he needs to do, and he has the infrastructure in place with his coaching staff and the veterans with him in the staff to get the adjustment made. If he can make it, he can take the next step in his career and take an already good Red Sox rotation to another level. But we’ve been saying this for years, now. The time is now for Rodriguez to finally make good on that potential. Breakout seasons have become routine for this third baseman. Might we see another in 2019?"Fast FactsThird baseman27 years oldNative of Puerto Ordaz, VenezuelaObjectively handsomeMade his first All-Star appearance in 2018, and finished 18th in MVP votingBetter at baseball than you or any of your friendsOrganizational historySigned by the Detroit Tigers as an amateur free agent in 2008Made MLB debut on June 4, 2014Traded by the Tigers to the Cincinnati Reds for Alfredo Simon following 2014 seasonNo, seriously, go look it up. That trade really happened.Signed a 7-year, $66 million extension with the Reds before the 2018 season. He is under control through at least 2024, with a team option for 2025.Career statsScouting reportSource: FanGraphsKen Gif-y Jr.ProjectionsOutlookIt’s easy to forget who Eugenio Suarez was when he first arrived in Cincinnati. He was not a top prospect Randy Jones Jersey , nor was he a former top prospect, nor was he an under-the-radar prospect who suddenly looked like a great major leaguer as soon as he got the call up. He was sort of just a Guy, having debuted for the Tigers at the impressively young age of 22, but still known as a glove-first shortstop who might hit some or might not. Think of, I don’t know, the other former Tigers shortstop the Reds just picked up. That’s about what people expected out of Suarez.Then, in his first year in Cincinnati, he broke out a bit. He put together an above-average offensive season, though he did so while showing a worse glove than he was expected to have. Then, in 2017, he broke out for real, threatening 4 WAR thanks to suddenly exceptional third base defense and an even more suddenly dangerous power bat and plate discipline. He was given a contract extension that seemed plenty fair for both sides, and then, somehow, in 2018, he broke out again.According to Statcast data, between 2017 and 2018, Suarez jumped from the 25th percentile among all major league hitters in exit velocity to the 89th percentile, the 30th percentile to the 88th percentile in hard-hit percentage, the 76th percentile to the 92nd percentile in xwOBA, and the 56th percentile to the 92nd percentile in xSLG.Those are all different ways of saying Suarez began crushing the baseball in 2018. You can also tell that from his isolated power jump from .200 to .243, or just good old fashioned dingers http://www.padresfanproshop.com/authentic-brad-hand-jersey , which jumped from 26 to 34. Suarez hit for the same isolated power average as Giancarlo Stanton. He slugged three points higher than Matt Carpenter, who was nearly an MVP. He hit as many home runs as Bryce Harper.This is my favorite Fangraphs search from the 2018 season:Baseball, in its modern iteration, is largely about maximizing contact. It’s no surprise to see Joey Votto at the top of this list, given that his entire approach has been built around only putting the pitch he wants in play, and hitting that pitch as squarely as possible. What might be a surprise to some is that the one player in all of baseball who did a better job than Votto of maximizing contact in 2018 was Suarez.Many hitters who experience such a significant change in exit velocity can thank some kind of swing change or launch angle buy-in for the effects. But for Suarez, that isn’t the case. Here’s how the ball has left Suarez’s bat over each season of his career, though I’d like to pay specific attention to 2017 and 2018:Suarez hit the ball in the air and pulled it at identical rates between 2017 and 2018, had the most marginal of increase in his line drive rate, and switched some of his opposite field trajectories for up-the-middle trajectories. do the same thing twice. We’ve watched him look very bad and very good defensively, watched him walk very little and a whole lot, andwatched him hit for below-average power until he became one of the very best power hitters in baseball. He has changed so very drastically at times, and in so many different areas, yet somehow he has always emerged a better player than he was before.There is still room, unbelievably, for Suarez to grow in 2019. His defensive numbers could pick back up, as could his walk rate, either of which would make him a very serious MVP candidate if combined with the quality of contact he made a year ago. He’s still only 27, which means he ought to be just now entering the best years of his career. That is very good news for the Reds, and extremely bad news for everyone else.