From Jackson Stone:
Carlos Rodón’s last trip to Kansas City had been gnawing at him for months.
So much so that when he looked at the schedule this season, he circled this four-game set in his mind, relishing the opportunity to get payback on the Royals.
On Monday night, Rodón did that and more, tossing seven innings of one-run ball to lead the Yankees to a 4-2 win over the Royals at Kauffman Stadium. The left-hander faced the minimum through four innings and didn’t allow a hit until the fifth, lowering his ERA to 2.93 with his seventh consecutive quality start.
Consider that 2023 start washed.
“I definitely knew this game was coming,” Rodón said. “It was circled on the calendar, and I wanted to show up and give my team the best chance to win after coming out of here last year with what happened and not pitching well. I definitely remembered that.”
Rodon had a weird game. The lack of strikeouts is concerning, but his stuff played up well enough that he was getting mostly soft contact. I couldn’t believe how he couldn’t put away Hunter Renfroe in the third, but amusingly enough, during that at-bat, Renfroe broke his toe by fouling off MULTIPLE pitches into his foot! Crazy. That’s some DJ LeMaheieu type shit right there.
Speaking of LeMahieu, he’s starting to heal up, and drive the ball with some authority, and he played a great game defensively, and can actually, you know, execute a bunt, which is something (the Yankees were bunting crazy in this game).
Juan Soto looked fine in his return. It’ll be fun seeing him batting ahead of Judge in the second game of the series. Great win.
Rodon celebrating finally getting Renfroe out after TWELVE pitches is the featured image.
It certainly is starting to look like Rodon is not done. Tampa is done. If DJ can play first we need a 3b. Otherwise we need a 1b. Cmon cashman – do something. This is the best team in a decade. Flags fly forever – go for it!
Don’t say that too loud. Cash is liable to go out and swing a deal for Rendon AND Sano.
That’s Rodon “celebrating”? Looks more like “Rodon utterly, unspeakably appalled.”
If this Rodon without the strikeouts is maintainable, then his recover has been amazing. But Rodon without the strikeouts isn’t something I’m totally sold on yet. Baseball used to have lots of pitchers like that, these days not so much. But really… IS it maintainable? Do history and statistics tell us anything about that (for those who do more of the statistics than I do)?
Weird game. Somehow, without Judge, without Volpe, really, without Stanton, without a really impressive options, and with only the 3 strikeouts for Rodon, they won it. But it would be more encouraging if Volpe kept hitting, if both the pitching and the offense looked more formidible. Weird game.
Volpe, I think, is closer to what he can be, but not there yet.
My guess is that he just has one approach. Last year it was trying to hit consistently for power – didn’t work out at all.
This year it’s consistently giving himself away slapping the ball to the opposite field. Better.
But when you only do one thing, I bet it’s much easier for the pitchers to adjust.
He has some power. He needs to be able to pick his spots, often just getting on base, sometimes going for the xbh. In other words, he needs to make himself harder to adjust to.
He’s one of the five best shortstops in baseball, let’s not make perfect the enemy of the good
Yeah, I don’t expect him to be Soto with the bat at SS. .270-.300 with a .350+ OBP and 15 HRS with his surprisingly good defense is just fine.
I agree with all that, but it’s right after a hot streak. That may very well be a selection bias that skews the numbers – I hope the numbers are right, of course. Right BEFORE that hot streak you guys wouldn’t have been saying this. He seems to be cooling off to me, and that’s why I bring it up.
I’ll take gold glove defense and 260 hitting with 10 HRs. There’s a HOF SS who did that without the HRs. Of course his glove was super gold….
The complaint function seems broken. Brian?
Sure, you might take it, which means “settle for’ it. But he has shown the ability to be a lot more. Is it not worth discussing what that looks like, what parts of the approach might be holding him back, what can be done to fix that?
rodon had 9 strikeouts the game before, i think it’s a little early to declare him the next jamie moyer.
Agreed. But the same goes the other way. After the 9 strikeout game, I was, like, “Very nice, let’s see if he can do it again,” and then he didn’t. If he DOES do it again, then of course, that’s new information that will inform the take, ya know?
If he’d done it in lots of the previous games… but so far this year he’s been disturbingly moyeresque, it’s the 9-strikeout game that requires reinforcement, not the other way around.
Yeah, exactly. I’d LOVE it if he started having more games like the 9 strikeout game. But he hasn’t so far.
I think the issue with Volpe, like a lot of these guys, is the lack of consistency. It seems like every hot streak is followed by a cold streak. If the end result is good, then fair enough, but it’s still frustrating when he hits into one of these stretches where he is 3 for his last 24, with no walks.
Exactly. And if that’s true, the result isn’t the result RIGHT at the end of a hot streak or a cold streak, but something in the middle. Right now we’re at the end (or not? that would be cool) of the biggest hot streak he’s had in the majors.
And, he is only 23. Honestly, he probably shouldn’t have started the season at MLB last year, but he got good experience. It’s too bad Peraza has been so shit this season. He’d be great to plug into 3B.
But that’s baseball. Who just hits their line all season? Maybe Volpe is more volatile than average but how would you even measure that?
SM, that’s the point. That’s why selective endpoints – like right now – can be deceiving.
I took a glance through Rodon’s numbers at Statcast. They don’t look particularly good in any dimension, though not terrible either. I have a suspicion he’s benefiting from the dead ball, which, fine, not every pitcher is so at least he’s got that going for him.
Yeah, the deadened ball has to come into play a bit, as we’re seeing some freakishly good pitching performances this year from some unlikely pitchers. Fucking MLB and their weird ass manipulations, so you never know what to expect the following year. Like Cash made X decisions based on the ball in 2019, and then they deadened the ball a bit. Now they’ve deadened the ball even MORE, and, like, how do you judge a Gil or a Schmidt knowing that they’ve been dealing with a deadened ball? It just makes player evaluations unduly difficult, and it’s quite bogus.
A guy in the FG chat mentioned a rumor that the balls were tweaked to make breakers break less and the unintended consequence is that they don’t fly as far. No evidence but it fits with Manfred’s MO
wouldn’t dead balls spin less? I’m picturing a dense, water laden ball
Ben Rice tied for 7th in HRs on SWB. If Cole pitches in AAA for a rehab, I’d be interested to see if Rice catches him. We’ll find out on Friday.
If the ball is deadened Judge is the greatest player ever.
And Soto. Yeah, it’s amazing.
Well, it isn’t the dead ball era.
Let’s see if 2 days off helped Rizzo.
Back to normalcy
A Volpe (R) SS
J Soto (L) RF
A Judge (R) CF
A Verdugo (L) LF
G Stanton (R) DH
A Rizzo (L) 1B
G Torres (R) 2B
A Wells (L) C
O Cabrera (S) 3B
Guess they want to also give DJ a rest during this stint of 13 games in 13 days.