Miami Christian alum was starting pitcher in Nicaragua’s first-ever World Baseball Classic game

Carlos Rodriguez could hardly envision he would be in the spot he was on Saturday. The right-handed pitcher is just 21 years old, has one year of minor-league baseball under his belt and hasn’t pitched above High A.

Yet there he was, on the mound at loanDepot park as Nicaragua’s starting pitcher to open pool play against Puerto Rico in the country’s first-ever World Baseball Classic game.

And not just pitching against a stacked Puerto Rico lineup. Pitching well against a stacked Puerto Rico lineup.

Rodriguez, a Miami Christian alumnus ranked as the No. 13 prospect in the Milwaukee Brewers’ organization according to MLB Pipeline, nearly single-handedly kept Nicaragua in the game before Puerto Rico dominated against Nicaragua’s bullpen to win 9-1.

“It was a great honor for me,” Rodriguez said. “It was everything I could dream of. But at the end of the day the goal was to win the game and we weren’t able to do that.”

That’s no fault of Rodriguez, who held Puerto Rico to just one earned run allowed on two hits, a walk and a hit by pitch while striking out three over four innings.

The run came in the first inning. Puerto Rico quickly got runners on first and second via a Francisco Lindor groundball single and a Kike Hernandez walk, which prompted a mound meeting.

Rodriguez settled in from there. He got MJ Melendez, a Westminster Christian alumnus, to fly out to center field which moved Lindor to third base. Rodriguez then got Emmanuel Rivera to hit a groundball that could have been an inning-ending double play, but Rivera was safe at first base and Lindor scampered home to give Puerto Rico an early 1-0 lead.

After that, Rodriguez faced just one batter over the minimum. He erased a Neftali Soto leadoff single in the second by getting Eddie Rosario to ground into a double play and worked around a Lindor hit by pitch in the third by getting Hernandez and Melendez to both pop out.

The three he struck out: Javier Baez swinging on a curveball in the dirt, Christian Vazquez on a well-placed fastball at the top of the zone and Emmanuel Rivera on a cutter that just clipped the bottom of the zone.

“I was just excited to try and throw strikes,” Rodriguez said. “I wasn’t worried about who was in the box. At the end of the day, they’re humans like me, so I was just trying to get outs.”

Pretty impressive considering he was drafted just two years ago in the sixth round by the Brewers. He made 26 appearances last season (20 starts) in the minor leagues, pitching to a 3.01 ERA with 129 strikeouts against 40 walks while holding opponents to a .198 batting average over 107 2/3 innings. Seven of those starts were in High A, where he had a 1.98 ERA over 36 1/3 innings.

As for what the experience of pitching for Nicaragua meant for Rodriguez overall?

“It was amazing,” he said. “I don’t even have words. Being able to see all those fans and pitch in front of all of them, it was basically a World Series game for me.”