How Rodón has changed the conversation

10/16/2024 01:00 PM

The Yankee southpaw evaded damning questions with his best outing in pinstripes to date.

Is baseball a team sport? On the one hand, we can easily analyze individual performances in a silo, independent of one another. On the other, though, there's no denying that certain individual performances have an certain effect on the entire team. Carlos Rodón has had two such performances so far this postseason.

On October 7th, he crumbled after a very strong first two innings that saw him strike out the side in the first. He finished with 3.2 IP, giving up four runs on seven hits to match his seven strikeouts.

One frustrating part (out of a handful) was Rodón's apparent disdain for his changeup, which looked good not only that night, but all season. He threw seven changeups that outing and generated three whiffs. Our own Peter Brody wrote about how Rodón should throw his changeup more way back in April. It's not only that it pairs well as a tertiary pitch to compliment his fastball and slider, but it's also genuinely one of the best ones in the game. It has a 5 Run Value according to Statcast, which is incredible considering he only throws it 12.9 percent of the time. When his slider is averaging a 97.1 exit velocity like it did that night, it becomes downright maddening that he doesn't adopt a more varied approach.

Not only did Rodón lack command of his pitches, but he also lacked command of his emotions. Usually, I don't put much stock into body language analysis — dissecting human emotions frame-by-frame and out-of-context can be worse than useless. Parsing through film wasn't necessary to get a read on Rodón, however. While he was pitching lights out, it was clear he was at an emotional level that could not be sustained for the entire night.

I wouldn't have brought Rodón's emotions into the spotlight if he did not mention it as something he worked on before his start against Cleveland. He did that by emulating Gerrit Cole's icy stoicism, and it worked to great effect. He had perhaps the best start of his Yankee career by striking out nine in six innings of one-run ball.

Take the top of the fourth inning, for example. After a wild bottom of the third that saw the Yankees take the lead off of a pair of wild pitches and a Juan Soto solo shot, an inning without any daylight for the Guardians' offense was crucial. Rodón was up to the task, with Lane Thomas and Josh Naylor striking out after José Ramírez gave a ball a ride to center.

Another example of Rodón's emotional control was in the top of the sixth. After Brayan Rocchio absolutely crushed a leadoff homer, Rodón was able to sit down the heart of Cleveland's lineup in Steven Kwan, David Fry, and Ramírez — no easy feat.

What didn't change is Rodón's pitch mix. In fact, he placed even more confidence in his fastball and slider, throwing only nine changeups in six innings as opposed to seven in 3.2. The big difference was his ability to use the slider in generating those whiffs he's so dependent on. His slider had an eye-watering 69 percent whiff rate.

He was also able to locate and rely upon his fastball, in stark contrast to his start against the Royals. Where he needed to mix in the changeup against Kansas City when his primary pitches weren't working, he could afford to stick to basics this start.

With that start, Rodón not only changed his own narrative, but perhaps changed the narrative of this Yankee team's postseason run. If he can carve Cleveland up again like that, the questions about Rodón's status as an ace will disappear while new questions — like whether the Yankees have the best starting rotation remaining — will emerge. Considering Rodón was nowhere near certain to perform before the playoffs, his bounce back start after the fiasco against the Royals escapes understatement.