Julio Rodriguez Destroys "An Eephus That Only Vaguely Even Eephs"

Julio Rodríguez is all smiles after his fourth homer of the year for @ARTravs 😀 pic.twitter.com/CxPJEvIkiG

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) August 20, 2021

This Is What Happens When One Of Baseball’s Best Prospects Is Served A Meatball By A Position Player
David Roth, Defector, August 20, 2021

Julio Rodriguez is one of the very best prospects in baseball, and has been since he arrived in the United States as an 18-year-old in 2019. He spent most of this season absolutely beating the pants off opposing pitching at High-A, a league in which he was nearly three years younger than the average player. When it became clear that he was too good for that level the Mariners promoted him, and Rodriguez has since been only slightly less rude to pitchers at Double-A Arkansas, in a league he is just a shade more than four years younger than the competition on balance. In August, he suited up for the Dominican Republic's bronze medal-winning Olympic team and put up a .417/.625/.444 batting line in a lineup full of recent big leaguers and against players of similar caliber. He is really good . . .

Anyway, here is what happened when Isaias Quiroz, a 24-year-old backup catcher for the Frisco RoughRiders, threw Rodriguez an absolute cement-mixer of a pseudo-eephus during the seventh and final inning of the second game of a Double-A doubleheader that the Travelers were in the process of sweeping on Thursday night. . . .

The angle at which the baseball leaves the frame makes me laugh every single time.