Grayson Rodriguez would step onto the mound Friday night against the New York Yankees with the odds against him and nobody paying him any mind. All the eyes were on Yankees’ captain Aaron Judge who was making his long-awaited return to the team after suffering a toe tear on June 3rd. Along with Judge, pitching against Rodriguez was Yankees’ ace Gerrit Cole.

Grayson Rodriguez has had his struggles in his early career as he would make his Major League debut on April 5th and made 10 starts before being optioned to Baltimore’s Triple-A affiliate the Norfolk Tides. In those starts, Rodriguez would go 2-2, with a 7.35 ERA, 37 ER over 45.1 IP and a 1.74 WHIP. Rodriguez, The Orioles’ #2 prospect behind Adley Rutschman and MLB’s #4 ranked prospect, would be able to find some confidence over 8 starts in Triple-A going 4-0 with a 1.96 ERA giving up 9 ER over 41.1 IP.

The Orioles would recall Rodriguez on July 17th and in his two starts before facing the Yankees, he would go 10.2 IP with a 5.06 ERA giving up 6 ER with 10 SO. In last night’s game Grayson Rodriguez showed out as one of the top prospects in the Majors. He went 6.1 innings, shutting out the Yankees only giving up 3 hits and 2 walks and striking out 4. He threw 97 pitches and 70 of them were strikes.

Rodriguez’s fastball was on point all night as he threw 55 of them averaging about 98.3 mph while topping out at 100.4. Rodriguez was able to dot the edges and corners with the fastball and cause 8 swings and misses from the Yankees hitters. Rodriguez’s changeup was his main secondary pitch. The Yankees swung at 54 pitches, but most of the time they were overpowered or produced weak contact. Rodriguez spoke postgame about locating his fastball saying, “We kinda had a plan on what we wanted to do with it. We wanted to go out and throw a lot of heaters, and I think that being able to go in and out kept them off balance there, and really opened up the zone for me.”

Rodriguez’s quality start kept the Orioles toe to toe with the Yankees as the Orioles offense struggled to produce against Gerrit Cole. Luckily for the Orioles, Anthony Santander would send the home crowd in a frenzy with a 425 foot walk-off homerun against a Tommy Kahnle changeup. Grayson Rodriguez will look to build off last night’s outing when he faces off against another division rival the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday.