The first game of spring means baseball season is officially back, and the Yankees began their 2026 tune-up with an exhibition game in Sarasota against the Baltimore Orioles. They lost 2-0, with the only offense in the game coming from a two-run blast off the bat of Pete Alonso. The Orioles’ new first baseman hit the towering shot off of non-roster invitee Bradley Hanner in the bottom of the sixth and carried Baltimore to victory. It was a silent showing for the Yankees offense, and arguably the biggest story of the day for the Bombers was Elmer Rodríguez.
The Yankees handed the ball to their No. 3 prospect (per MLB Pipeline) and he was able to pitch three scoreless innings with one strikeout, three hits allowed, and no walks in his spring training debut. Rodríguez’s line is more impressive than it looks given that the Orioles lineup looked almost identical to what we will likely see from them on Opening Day, missing just Taylor Ward and Dylan Beavers.
Rodríguez, who spent all of 2025 in High-A and Double-A (with a couple starts in Triple-A at the very end of the season), was tasked with facing Gunnar Henderson, Pete Alonso, Adley Rutschman, Samuel Basallo, Colton Cowser, and more. It started off well, as he retired Henderson, Alonso, and Basallo in order in the first. Rodríguez began the outing with a 97-mph sinker, and induced a groundball from Henderson on the fifth pitch of the at-bat. He needed just two pitches to retire Alonso, dotting a sinker on the inside corner to begin the at-bat and then getting Alonso to chase a slider away and roll over to second base. His only strikeout of the afternoon came against Basallo, who chased a high sinker to end the inning.
Rodríguez began the second by falling behind in the count 2-0 against Tyler O’Neill and allowing a single to left field. He threw a strike on each corner against Cowser, then induced a ground ball on a 1-2 curve for a force out at second. A single from Rutschman put runners on the corners, but a changeup away to Heston Kjerstad turned into an inning-ending double play.
His third and final inning began with two more groundouts from Coby Mayo and Jeremiah Jackson. Gunnar Henderson jumped on a first-pitch sinker misplaced right down the middle, and Alonso stung a sinker towards the gap that was run down on an excellent play by center fielder Kenedy Corona. Rodríguez ended his outing with 42 pitches, 30 of them for strikes.
The spring training outing also means public Statcast data for Rodríguez is now available, and the results back up what we know about him so far. He’s not a pitcher who will blow hitters away with electric stuff, but he possesses a deep arsenal and a mature ability to locate and sequences his pitches well beyond his years. Different models began publishing reports on Rodríguez’s outing shortly after it ended, notably from TJStats and Pitch Profiler, both of whom put Stuff+ grades in the mid-to-low 90s (meaning slightly-below average) on all of his pitches, with the former putting a 101 grade on his slider and the latter putting a 102 grade on his curveball.
This type of profile provides Rodríguez with a rock-solid base for a starting pitcher while also leaving room for him to grow. The below-average stuff grades are a bit concerning at first glance, but as evidenced by pitchers like Trevor Rogers (who Rodríguez coincidentally faced off against in today’s game), there are pathways to success without the sort of electric stuff we’re used to seeing from ace pitchers. Rogers pitched 109 innings in 2025 with a jaw-dropping 1.81 ERA, despite a mediocre 24.3-percent strikeout rate and just a 92 Stuff+ grade (per FanGraphs). He looked very similar today as he did last year, and held the Yankees scoreless through two innings with three strikeouts. Rodríguez could look at today’s counterpart as a model for success.
As far as the eye test, Rodríguez’s start was impressive. His sinker was topping out at 97 mph, and he threw a few devastating 88-90 mph changeups (which appear to have fooled a few of the models that classified them as sinkers, which could potentially be throwing off his model for those pitches). He only induced five whiffs, but he was getting MLB hitters to chase all three of his off speed pitches and ended the day with a 70-percent groundball rate.
Last year was a breakout season for Rodríguez, who pitched 150 innings across three levels and posted a 2.58 ERA between them. He had a 29-percent strikeout rate on the season, so one of the final steps for the minor-league development team will be finding a way to make his ability to miss bats translate at the highest level. He will almost certainly start the season in Triple-A, and is very likely to make his MLB debut in 2026. The Yankees’ starting rotation is deep enough that they should be able to take their time with Rodríguez (barring catastrophe), but he should be knocking around the door by summertime. He climbed all the way to the top of the organization’s farm system last season, and he’ll look to complete his journey in 2026.