Quantifying the Eduardo Rodriguez vs. USA match up (and the USA's lineup might have been better than the 1927 Yankees)

Eduardo Rodríguez's stats the last 2 years with league average in parentheses. He has been a mediocre pitcher at best the last 2 years over 204 IP (all numbers are from Baseball Reference and Stathead)

2024
5.04 ERA (4.13)
4.57 FIP (4.06)
84 ERA+ (101)

2025
5.02 ERA (4.22)
4.57 FIP (4.14) 

86 ERA+ (101)

 

This year he is projected to have a 4.56 ERA in 144 IP

 

Here are the starters for the USA with their OPS+ from last year. This is a lineup that is far above average

Judge 215
Schwarber 160
Buxton 136
Witt 136
Harper 129
Turang 121
Bregman 128
Smith 152
Anthony 140

The simple average is 146. That would have made you the 8th best hitter in baseball last year. And it is far higher than the highest in the AL/NL since 1920. That belongs to the 1927 Yankees who had 127. 

 

Rodriguez is a lefty and the USA had 4 lefties in the lineup. In his career Rodriguez has allowed a higher OPS against lefties than righties. Last year he allowed over .800 to both lefties & righties. No team last year had an .800 OPS. Yankees were highest at .787. So normally, facing Rodriguez would turn you into the best hitting team in baseball.

 

Here is how the USA starters did in OPS vs. lefties last year

Judge 1.279
Schwarber .964
Buxton 1.050
Witt .879
Harper .815
Turang .752
Bregman .855
Smith .836
Anthony .770

None of them had any trouble with lefties. The simple average of their OPS vs. lefties was .911. The highest OPS ever is .872 by the 1927 & 1930 Yankees.

 

Here are the overall OPS numbers for Team USA in 2025 (includes both LHP & RHP):

 

Judge  1.144
Schwarber  0.928
Buxton  0.878
Witt  0.852
Harper  0.844
Turang  0.794
Bregman  0.821
Smith  0.901
Anthony  0.859

 

The simple average is .891, again, better than the 1927 Yankees. 

 

Now maybe we should look at what these guys are projected to do this year. 

 

Judge  1.061
Schwarber  0.853
Buxton  0.812
Witt  0.885
Harper  0.847
Turang  0.726
Bregman  0.784
Smith  0.801
Anthony  0.833

 

The simple average here is .845. That would be tied for 9th best OPS in the AL/NL since 1920. 

 

That .845 is about 94.8% of the .891 simple average from their overall OPS numbers in 2025. If we multiply the 146 OPS+ they had last year times .948 we get about 138. So a projected OPS+ for Team USA is still higher than for the 1927 Yankees (not sure if that adjustment makes sense or not).

 

Here are the ERAs last year for the guys who pitched for Venezuela last nite followed by their projections for this year

 

E. Rodriguez  5.02  4.56
E. Bazardo  2.52  3.63
J. Butto  3.90  3.65
A. Zerpa  4.18  4.08
D. Palencia  2.91  3.74

 

A mix but no one here is unhittable. And the projections overall, the second set of numbers, are just okay.

 

The other guy was Machado (not listed) who has not pitched in MLB since 2023 when he had a 5.22 ERA. His career ERA in MLB is 4.48 in 148 IP. 

 

Here are the spring training OPS numbers for the starters for the USA last nite. Not alot of PAs, around 15 each and no more than 20. And I don't know how good the pitchers were that they faced

Judge  1.285
Schwarber  0.833
Buxton  0.796
Witt  1.3
Harper  1.5
Turang  1.212
Bregman  1.481
Smith  1.273
Anthony  0.616

So it seems like they were doing well 

Did Lefty Grove Lead the AL in Championship Win Probability Added (cWPA) in 1931 as Both a Starter and a Reliever?

What is cWPA? See Single-Season Leaders & Records for Championship WPA (cWPA) from Baseball Reference:

"Given average teams, this is the change in probability, displayed in percentage points. A change of +/- 100% would indicate one world series win added or lost."

If a pitcher or batter does well in close games late in the season, they will probably have a high cWPA. It also helps to do well late in games and be on a contender. 

Click here to see the leaders in cWPA in the 1931 AL. You will have to click on the cWPA column heading to get the pitchers ranked accordingly.

I looked at the top 16, which includes every guy with 1.0 or higher. Then I went to the Baseball Reference game logs for each guy and determined how much cWPA they had has as a starter and then as a reliever. cWPA is listed for each game and games as starters and relievers can easily be separated.

The first table shows those 16 pitchers ranked by cWPA as starters.

Player	Starter	Reliever
Lefty Grove*	16.4	4.1
Rube Walberg*	8.5	-1.3
George Earnshaw	4.1	0.8
Firpo Marberry	3.9	2.3
Roy Mahaffey	3.2	0.9
Waite Hoyt	2.1	-0.2
Herb Pennock*	1.9	0
Clint Brown	1.7	-0.2
Earl Whitehill*	1.6	0
Pat Caraway*	1.3	0
Lefty Stewart*	1.2	0
Bump Hadley	1.1	0.5
Bobby Burke*	1.0	2.0
Lefty Gomez*	0.9	2.9
Carl Fischer*	0.3	2.4
Wilcy Moore	-0.8	3.1

This does not mean that these were the top 16 in cWPA if we only counted starts, but how the top 16 overall would rank amongst themselves if we only looked at starts. Grove is the clear leader. 

Now if they are ranked by relief appearances.

Player	Starter	Reliever
Lefty Grove*	16.4	4.1
Wilcy Moore	-0.8	3.1
Lefty Gomez*	0.9	2.9
Carl Fischer*	0.3	2.4
Firpo Marberry	3.9	2.3
Bobby Burke*	1.0	2.0
Roy Mahaffey	3.2	0.9
George Earnshaw	4.1	0.8
Bump Hadley	1.1	0.5
Herb Pennock*	1.9	0
Earl Whitehill*	1.6	0
Lefty Stewart*	1.2	0
Pat Caraway*	1.3	0
Waite Hoyt	2.1	-0.2
Clint Brown	1.7	-0.2
Rube Walberg*	8.5	-1.3

 

I don't think it is likely that any other pitcher could have beaten Grove in either category. Any pitcher with less than 1.0 cWPA overall would need to have a very large negative in one of the roles. For example, to beat Grove's 4.1 in relief he would need to have had -3.3 as a starter (no one in the league was worse than 2.9 overall). So if he had 4.2 as a reliever and -3.3 as a starter, he would be 0.9 overall (and 0.9 was the next highest overall after the top 16 that I looked at here).

 

There might be some pitchers in other years who led in both roles. In Grove's time, regular starters pitched fairly often in relief.  See my post Starting Pitchers As Relievers Over Time.

 

Grove had a 31-4 record with a 2.04 ERA and 5 saves. Here are his stats in both roles:

 

Split	W	L	ERA	G	IP	OPS
as Starter	27	3	1.94	30	260.1	0.574
as Reliever	4	1	3.18	11	28.1	0.644

 

To put these numbers in perspective, the league ERA was 4.38 while the league OPS was .740.  Grove, of course, was also helped by being on a first place team