Rubby De La Rosa, who I like to call RDLR, is a 27 year old righty who stands 6’1” and weighs 225 lbs. He’s a righty who at times in his big league career has impressed. At other points he’s had trouble staying healthy or performing even moderately effectively. Does he offer enough “upside” that you should be looking his way in a mixed league format? Let’s us explore that question for the suddenly hot RDLR.
THE MINOR LEAGUE NUMBERS
| LEVEL | W-L | ERA | WHIP | K/9 | BB/9 | IP |
2009 | Rookie | 0-1 | 6.06 | 1.71 | 12.1 | 6.1 | 16.1 |
2010 | A, AA | 7-2 | 2.37 | 1.13 | 8.3 | 2.6 | 59.1 |
2011 | AA | 2-2 | 2.92 | 1.23 | 11.7 | 4.3 | 40.0 |
2012 | Rookie, A, AA | 1-0 | 2.08 | 0.92 | 8.3 | 2.8 | 13.0 |
2013 | AAA | 3-3 | 4.48 | 1.41 | 8.5 | 5.4 | 80.1 |
2014 | AAA | 2-4 | 3.45 | 1.25 | 8.6 | 3.8 | 60.0 |
| TOTAL | 15-12 | 3.25 | 1.28 | 8.9 | 4.2 | 269 |
* In 2011 he was rated as the 90th best prospect in baseball according to Baseball America.
THE MAJOR LEAGUE NUMBERS
| W-L | ERA | WHIP | K/9 | BB/9 | IP |
2011 | 4-5 | 3.71 | 1.40 | 8.90 | 4.60 | 60.2 |
2012 | 0-0 | 27.00 | 3.00 | 0.00 | 27.00 | 0.2 |
2013 | 0-2 | 5.56 | 1.50 | 4.76 | 1.59 | 11.1 |
2014 | 4-8 | 4.43 | 1.49 | 6.55 | 3.10 | 101.2 |
2015 | 14-9 | 4.67 | 1.36 | 7.16 | 3.01 | 188.2 |
2016 | 4-4 | 3.93 | 1.12 | 9.33 | 2.70 | 36.2 |
TOTAL | 26-28 | 4.46 | 1.38 | 7.39 | 3.24 | 399.2 |
* In 2011 his season ended when he had Tommy John surgery on August 9th.
October 4, 2012 Rubby was dealt with Jerry Sands to the Red Sox to complete the deal for Josh Beckett, Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez.
December 14, 2014 he was dealt by the Red Sox to the D’backs along with Raymel Flores and Allen Webster for Wade Miley.
THE SKILLS
Rubby has made 85 appearances in the big leagues, 66 of them starts. Last year was the first time he appeared in more than 20 games, and his 14 victories and 188.2 innings intrigue, even if the ratios were middling (4.67 ERA and 1.36 WHIP).
RDLR owns an 8.9 K/9 rate as a minor leaguer. Therefore, it’s not insane to think he could hold on to his 9.33 K/9 mark, the rate he has through nine outings, though his current mark is two full batters above his career rate. His 10.2 swinging strike rate is solid, though it is just a bit above his 9.8 percent career mark. Let’s say that a mark in the 8’s seems probable. One of the reasons for that is pitch usage.
He is throwing his fastball more this season. The last three years he’s thrown his fastball about 59 percent of the time, well below the 65 percent mark he currently owns. He’s also upped his slider usage from 17 percent, his career mark, to 27 percent this season. While increasing his workload with those two pitches he’s dropped his changeup usage from 19 percent the last two seasons down to seven percent. Take a look at what batters have done to his changeup and you will understand why he’s basically scrapped the pitch. RDLR owns a .932 OPS for his career on the changeup. That’s brutally inefficient. This season, besides using the pitch less, he’s having a bit more success – and then some. It’s a very small sample size, he’s only thrown the pitch 40 times, but batters aren’t having any success with the pitch with that .432 OPS. They don’t know when it’s coming, which makes things more challenging to hit the pitch one would think.
As a minor leaguer RDLR walked 4.2 batters per nine innings. That’s a terrible mark. It’s therefore not surprising to see that he owns a 3.24 mark as a big leaguer. However, it might be a little better than that. First, I just detailed how he’s changed his pitch usage, streamlined things, and that should help. Second, check out what his walk rate is since the start of the 2013 season: 2.95 over 338.1 innings. That’s a league average mark, and one that RDLR could live with.
As for the batted ball…
RDLR has been a bit homer prone in his career with a 1.26 HR/9 mark in the bigs. The rate is buoyed by his 14.4 percent HR/FB career ratio. The mark has been at least 11.5 percent the last three years and is currently at 13.3 percent. He gets the ball up, and it gets hit hard. However, Rubby is also the owner of a solid 48.3 percent ground ball rate for his career. He’s pushed that mark up to 49.8 percent over his last 38 outings as well as it inches upward. He’s the owner of a 1.50 GB/FB rate for his career, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Rubby is still looking for a way to deal with lefties, and that’s a big step for him to take his game to the next level. Here are the career numbers.
| AVG | OBP | OPS | K/BB |
vs. lefties | .289 | .361 | .760 | 1.72 |
vs. righties | .241 | .301 | .623 | 3.08 |
It’s early, but in 2016 he’s starting to have success against those righties a nice, but too early to be sure, trend as right-handed batters are at .222/.284/.352, an excellent level of work.
PLAYING TIME
I cannot see how he isn’t locked in to an every five game role for the Diamondbacks. They will run out Zack Greinke, Patrick Corbin and Shelby Miller. Then its Robbie Ray, RDLR and maybe Archie Bradley if he can ever convince the team he’s worth starting every five days versus just calling upon him here and there, vying for two spots. RDLR should hold down one of those.
CONCLUSION
Here’s a video I recently uploaded with some thoughts about RDLR.
I like the game enough that I can buy into rostering him. Everyone has a Kris Medlen or Martin Perez on their roster, and if you do then you will want to investigate adding Rubby. There’s no certainty that his recent run of success is sustainable, but I do like the overall game, the trends, and have always thought there was a solid pitcher in there, once all the noise was removed. Kicking the tires, at least as a streaming option, makes a lot of sense to this guy.
Ray Flowers can be heard Monday through Friday, 7 PM EDT and Friday on SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio (Sirius 210, XM 87). You can also hear Ray Sunday nights at 6 PM on the channel talking fantasy sports. Follow Ray’s work at Fantasy Alarm and on Twitter (@baseballguys).