{"id":745238,"date":"2026-06-18T15:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T15:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/745238\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T15:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T15:35:08","slug":"the-opener-bradish-espino-rodriguez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/745238\/","title":{"rendered":"The Opener: Bradish, Espino, Rodriguez"},"content":{"rendered":"

Athletics infielder Zack Gelof<\/a> pushed his hitting streak to 21 games with a solo homer on Wednesday against the Pirates. Injuries and poor performance have limited his time in the majors recently, but Gelof is back to being a fixture in the A\u2019s lineup.<\/p>\n

1. Bradish punches out a dozen<\/p>\n

Orioles right-hander Kyle Bradish<\/a> was knocked around for five earned runs over four innings against the Mariners last week. He got his revenge in a rematch on Wednesday, striking out a career-high 12 over 7 2\/3 innings in a win over Seattle. Bradish has flashed strong swing-and-miss skills the past two seasons. He posted a 32.5% strikeout rate over eight starts in 2024 before needing UCL surgery. The righty came back for six outings last year and punched out opponents at a 37.3% clip. The strikeouts have been down in 2026, as Bradish came into Wednesday\u2019s start with a 22.6% strikeout rate. More concerning might be the 12.1% walk rate, which went up after two free passes against the Mariners.<\/p>\n

2. Espino makes his debut<\/p>\n

Former top pitching prospect Daniel Espino<\/a> finally got into a game on Wednesday after being called up last week. The right-hander fired a perfect sixth inning, striking out two. Espino only tossed 12 pitches in his clean frame, but they were impressive. He sat at 99.8 mph with the four-seamer. The Brewers swung at it four times, and all were whiffs. Espino\u2019s three sliders averaged 91.6 mph. This appearance was clearly a low-leverage spot, with Cleveland trailing by three runs in the middle innings, but Espino might have the stuff to push for late-inning opportunities.<\/p>\n

3. Rodriguez reaches career milestone<\/p>\n

Diamondbacks left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez<\/a> tossed seven innings of one-run ball in a win over the Angels last night. The veteran earned the 100th victory of his career. Rodriguez is having a resurgent season in his third year in Arizona. He\u2019s posted a 2.45 ERA across 15 starts. The expected stats don\u2019t buy the strong start, as Rodriguez has a 4.91 xERA and a 4.41 xFIP. His 4.78 SIERA looks a lot like the ERAs over 5.00 he\u2019s put up the past two seasons. Rodriguez has been buoyed by a career-low .256 BABIP and a sub-10% HR\/FB rate, but he\u2019s also made a pitch tweak that could explain his improvement. The lefty has added an inch of induced vertical break and a bit more arm-side run to his four-seamer. The fastball has a +6 Run Value and has paired well with his changeup (+3 Run Value).<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Steven Bisig, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Athletics infielder Zack Gelof pushed his hitting streak to 21 games with a solo homer on Wednesday against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":745239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-745238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}