Diamondbacks Player Spotlight: P Rubby De La Rosa
By Blake Benard
One of the hardest thins about making a youth movement is when those players that a team depends on become inconsistent. For the Arizona Diamondbacks, that player is Rubby De La Rosa.
The Diamondback acquired De La Rosa while retooling their starting rotation during the offseason. At the cost of an established lefty starter Wade Miley, they were able to nab De La Rosa, a young power-throwing pitcher, Allen Webster (who is now in the rotation), and a minor leaguer.
The ceiling was high for De La Rosa. In 18 starts for the Boston Red Sox, he had a 4.43 ERA, struck out 74, and threw 101 innings showing extreme durability. The trade allowed him to become a full-time starter on an MLB team for the first time in his career. But his path so far in 2015 has been wild and inconsistent.
At times De La Rosa looks like a world-beater. Just look at his game-by-game stats:
May 18 – 9 IP, 2 ER, 5 SO
May 23 – 6 IP, 4 ER, 8 SO
May 29 – 5 IP, 4 ER, 4 SO
June 3 – 5 IP, 7 ER, 8 SO
June 9 – 5 IP, 9 ER, 4 SO
June 14 – 8 IP, 0 ER, 6 SO
June 19 – 7 IP, 1 ER, 6 SO
Its aggravating how close De La Rosa can look to a premier MLB pitcher. He shown us the ability to go out and easily throw seven, eight, or nine innings of work and then in his next start he’ll barley get through five innings. Here’s one of the hardest things to swallow: Rubby has received run support like mad, specifically 6.47 per nine innings. That has led to a 6-3 record but it also frustrates you because if he can begin to even tap into consistency he can have a extremely successful 2015.
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As an organization, its hard to let a pitcher fight through the especially when your team is so close to making a playoff run. But it would be to the Diamondbacks advantage to let De Le Rosa keep pitching through his inconsistency. Here’s why:
Baring injury or demotion this will be De La Rosa’s first full year of starting in the big leagues. At 26, he’s show an ability to get deep into games, possess a shutdown fastball, and at times simply dominate a ball game. At the end of 2015, he will have thrown more innings and faced more batters that any other year of his career.
Looking deeper into his year so far, we can see where there is room for optimism. Starting with some simple stats, batters are only hitting .259 against him and we’ve already mentioned the run support he’s receiving. The concern lies with walks and lacking to control the big innings. You’d like to get his walk per nine innings down from 2.43 to somewhere in the ones.
Also his hits per nine innings is nearing ten a game and he allows over a home run a game. That’s the problem which leads to his big innings and inconsistency. If he can work on his control and limiting that blowout inning, there’s no question De La Rosa can become a solid rotation presence for the Diamondbacks.
They just need to let him pitch through it.