San Francisco Giants: Dereck Rodriguez is a Bumgarner/Lincecum Hybrid

Dereck Rodriguez has been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise mediocre season for the San Francisco Giants.

Despite his recent injury, he’s still in the conversation for NL Rookie of the Year. Rodriguez is one of the most exciting pitchers the San Francisco Giants have had in several years, and it’s not just because of what he does on the mound.

The San Francisco Giants have a way of acquiring pitchers that aren’t just good, they have those intangibles that make them special.

Tim Lincecum was a skinny kid who threw hard by contorting his body in a way that seemed impossible.

Madison Bumgarner was and is a good ‘ole country boy who you could see chopping lumber just as easily as throwing a baseball.

In a weird way, Rodriguez seems to be a hybrid of the two most beloved Giants pitchers in recent memory. He has the hair of Timmy and the confidence of MadBum.

His fastball velocity is usually in the 92-93 range, right in-between Lincecum when he threw mid-90s with ease and Bumgarner’s low-90s average.

Even his height, a solid 6-foot-1, falls between the 5-foot-11 Lincecum and the 6-foot-5 Bumgarner.

Facial hair-wise, his goatee and mustache are a happy medium between the tall lefty’s beard and Timmy’s (sometimes) stache and soulpatch.

So far, D-Rod’s stellar Cat Woman tattoo is his fun quirk that makes him stand apart and that much more fun to root for. The weirder the better as far as I’m concerned when it comes to Giants players.

It’s certainly too early to call, but with Rodriguez’s performance thus far he seems to be on the path that Bumgarner and Lincecum were on early in their careers.

Plus, the more I think about it, he seems to even have one similarity with another legend Giants pitcher Matt Cain in that neither seems to be very good at getting run support.

Despite that, Dereck Rodriguez has given us plenty to be excited about in the years to come. The fact that it seems he is what the love-child of Madison Bumgarner and Tim Lincecum would be like just makes him that much more fun to watch.

We can only hope that his minor injury is the exception and not the rule in an otherwise long and healthy career as a Giant.