The first few weeks of this baseball season haven’t exactly gone to plan for Grayson Rodriguez, who carries a 6.91 ERA into Friday’s start against the Tigers.

But we’ve seen encouraging signs from the Orioles’ young ace, who is primed for a bounce-back effort in a favorable spot. 

While the former top prospect hasn’t lasted more than five innings in any of his first three starts, he’s totaled 19 strikeouts in 14 ¹/₃ innings with exactly 12 swinging strikes in all three of those starts.

That’s helped bolster his surprisingly sharp FIP (3.95), with a differential between that and his ERA (2.91) that would rank top five among qualified starters.

We saw that swing-and-miss potential in his last start against the White Sox, who homered twice in the first inning.

Then Rodriguez locked in, firing four scoreless frames with eight punchouts — including six alone with his devastating changeup.

That pitch should be trouble for the Tigers, who rank dead last in Expected Weighted OBA (.294) and fourth in chase rate (31.6 percent) ahead of Friday’s contest.

They’ve also struggled mightily against changeups in particular, posting the second-lowest weighted runs per 100 pitches (-1.58) against the offering — among the worst performances by any team against any pitch this season.

If Rodriguez has his changeup working again on Friday like he did last Sunday, this could be a relatively quick five innings of work for the youngster.

Tigers first five innings under 1.5 runs (+150, PointsBet)