Get To Know Twins C/1B Prospect Ben Rodriguez

“I’m good at being an athlete. I want to be a good baseball player.”

Ben Rodriguez is 23-years-old, one of the elder statesmen on a very young Cedar Rapids Kernels roster. However, he may have the least time spent on a baseball field relative to many of the hitters on the roster. He is currently on the Kernels disabled list. Through his first 35 games, he has hit .237/.302/.377 (.680) with seven doubles and three home runs. He has come up with some big hits for the Kernels.

But he acknowledges that he needs time and games and at bats.

Rodriguez grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he played a lot of basketball. His father has played basketball in the Dominican Republic. Ben played a little baseball, but he was also a good basketball player. He didn’t start playing baseball only until midway through his high school years.

He was pretty good at Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale, so as graduation approached, he had several college options to continue playing baseball. One school that jumped out for him was Pepperdine for a variety of reasons, and then he took his visit to the school and was sold.

Rodriguez said, “I had options. Before I visited the school, I knew it was a very competitive academic school, which meant a lot to me. It was a smaller school, which I liked, great academics and great athletics. Once I visited, I was sold. I had to go there.”

His first year at Pepperdine, he didn’t play much. The next year, he missed a lot of time due to injury. But he played in 91 games over his final two seasons.

As the draft approached following his senior season in 2017, he wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. He didn’t have an agent. He knew he wouldn’t go on Day 1, but senior signs can start getting phone calls from teams around the fifth or sixth rounds. He heard from a couple of teams on Day 2, but he wasn’t drafted. Day 3 is a long day as Rounds 11 through 40 are covered. It’s a long day for the teams, and it can be a long day for the players.

Rodriguez noted, “I didn’t know what was going on. I was pretty confused. I was a little overwhelmed. Teams were calling and asking a lot of questions. I didn’t really follow the draft. I figured if someone called me, they’d call me. If not, I don’t know.”

Mid-afternoon, Rodriguez went to lunch with a friend. “Basically, I hadn’t received a call. I guess I wasn’t getting drafted. It was a good run. I had a good time. That whole process, I went through it with him at that time. What am I going to do now?”

And right after that, he said, “I got a text from the Twins. They were saying, ‘It’s late, but you’re still on the board and we want you to be on our team. What would you think if we drafted you here?’”

He was interested, but there were some deep thoughts going on through his head in literally just a few moments. “To be honest with you, at first I was thinking to myself, I don’t know. What kind of opportunity will I get? Then I talked to some people close to me very briefly, but I had an overwhelming Yes. You have to go. You have to give it a shot. It was incredible. I had realized that dream I had all my life. No matter if it doesn’t come to you how or when you want it to, I had still achieved it. That was huge. That was a really big moment for me. I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t expecting to feel that way.”

Let’s just say this… If Ben Rodriguez had not been drafted and been given this opportunity in baseball, he was going to be just fine. When he said that he picked Pepperdine in large part for the academics, it wasn’t just lip service.

Rodriguez graduated in four years from Pepperdine with a degree in physics with an emphasis in electricity and magnetism.

“I went there originally as an engineering major. A lot of physics overlaps with engineering. I love science and I just thought it was so interesting. After my freshman year, I had taken some physics classes, and after that I thought, Absolutely, this is what I want to do. As far as interest in magnetism, I just thought it was cool. Those were fun classes for me. They were super challenging, really hard, and I like them so much. It was some extra class. I picked it, and that was my track.”

If he wasn’t playing baseball right now, he would be continuing his education.

“Last summer, before I had been drafted, I had applied and been accepted into the medical school at Columbia University.”

While he hadn’t taken a pre-med curriculum at Pepperdine, Columbia has a program designed to achieve that goal.

“It’s called the post baccalaureate pre-medical program. It’s a program specifically designed for people who didn’t necessarily major in something to do with medicine. If you want to go there, you take the pre-med classes and then you get accepted and go to their medical school. I was on track to get into their medical program.”

Not a bad fall back plan, I’d say. While he notes that the acceptance can only be deferred for a year, he did talk to people at Columbia and told them he was playing baseball. “They were extremely supportive of the decision, and they told me whenever your career is over, try again.”

He acknowledged, “It gives me time. I didn’t really know what I wanted, to be honest. I knew I was a good student, and I knew I wanted to continue my education. That seemed like the most altruistic way to continue my education, to go to medical school and help people the best way that you can which is all I really cared about doing. Now that I’m here, I’m afforded more opportunities and I have more time to see if maybe there is another path that I can go on to fulfill that. Whatever it is. At some point, either during or after my career, my education will be continued.”

Helping people is something that is very important in the Rodriguez family. It’s not just words. They put their will to help people into action.

Ben’s mom joined the Peace Corp after college and was sent to the Dominican Republic where she was able to help a lot of people. That’s also where she met Ben’s dad, who is a doctor.

Ben also has an older sister who is a public school teacher in Brooklyn. “She did ‘Teach for America’ which is a branch of the Peace Corp. She went to the inner-city of Dallas and taught. She postponed continuing her education to do that. I’m very proud of her. Right now, she’s at Columbia getting her Masters in Education and teaching at the same time.”

His junior year of college, Ben went to Ecuador to teach.

Yes, it is fair to say that altruism runs in the family’s genetics.

A scouting report on Ben Rodriguez might look optimistic and glowing. At first glance, Rodriguez has the size (6-6, 230), some good speed, power and power potential and more. He's got the size to play first, but is nimble around the bag which is important. He has the ability to, as he said, “look good in a showcase. I can throw really hard. I can hit really far. I can run pretty fast.”

It was that athleticism and the tools that made him standout to me during spring training.

He continued, “I think I’m good at being an athlete right now. I don’t know if that’s necessarily something to be good at. That’s what I feel. I can react to pitches. I can hit guys who throw really hard. I can make good plays at first base. I can move around. I can catch well. I am flexible. I am a good athlete right now, but I want to be a good baseball player.”

But Rodriguez is still very raw on the field, and he knows it.

“I need to work on everything in the sense that I need to develop myself as a ballplayer. I’ve always been toolsy. But as a ballplayer I need to develop. I talk about that with Toby all the time, whether it’s having a better approach at the plate, or being more savvy with how I approach things offensively or defensively. Being a baseball player. I have a brain. I love learning, and I love thinking. My whole career thus far has been predicated on the fact that I can do things that are cool. I can come into a game and hit a ball really far, but I’m less attune to some things that others do. There are some things that you can only get through playing more and more games. I didn't play much in college. The last two years, I played, but I didn’t play summer ball. I don’t have the game time that most guys have. I think that’s a plus for me. When I look at my career. When I look at my strengths as a baseball player, I think I have the tools that I need. The thing that I need is just more time. What do I need to work on? I need to work on everything. I need to work on approach and knowing myself as a player.”

When the Twins called his name in the 38th round in 2017, they selected him as a catcher. Of his 35 games played this year, just six of them have been behind the plate.

He played little behind the plate in college, but he was a catcher in high school. “The scout who drafted me had seen me in high school as a catcher. Can you still catch? Obviously, being a kid who wanted to play professional baseball, I was like Sure, I’ll do whatever you want. I loved catching. In college it didn’t work out that way. There was more of an opportunity for me to play in different spots, so I moved around.”

Here’s hoping that the Twins give him some of that time that he needs to develop. Watch him play and you can see the potential. With his size and strength and speed, it is certainly worth giving him time to see if those athletic tools can turn into more polished skills in time.