Take out the negativity of the Yankees’ offense spending one other nine innings flailing and it wasn’t too bad an evening for Carlos Rodon.
Making his debut in pinstripes, the left-hander, who signed a $162 million contract with the Yankees this past offseason, returned from a series of injuries to throw 5 ¹/₃ innings, allowing two runs on 4 hits in what became a 3-0 loss to the Cubs.
Rodon, last 12 months’s NL ERA leader, sounded frustrated concerning the loss. Everyone else sounded optimistic — at the very least about Rodon, if not the woeful hitting.
“It was OK,” Rodon said of his outing. “Good fastball, but they were swinging early, they made some swings. Made me work somewhat in the sport. Wish it was somewhat higher for me.”
Throwing just 69 pitches, Rodon retired the primary six batters he faced and deployed a fastball-heavy mix all night, with 53 four-seamers, 12 sliders and just two changeups and curveballs, per Statcast.
That worked fantastic for a lot of the night, though Rodon’s biggest mistake got here when Cody Bellinger sat on a 1-0 fastball to open the third inning and homered into the second deck in right field.
The opposite run he allowed got here within the fifth, when Rodon walked two batters before Nico Hoerner singled in Trey Mancini.
“I believed Carlos was really good,” manager Aaron Boone said. “They got here in with a game plan and really selling out to that heater and the way it plays and stuff. They were aggressive to it, took some good swings, but I believed because he had the life there and was executing at the highest of the zone, thought he was really good. Really pitch-efficient.”
Rodon, for his part, looked as if it would focus more on what he lacked: the win, and his secondary pitches.
“[The fastball velocity] was good, I just wish I had the secondary stuff working somewhat higher, but that’s something to work on for this upcoming start,” he said. “In between work, throw more breaking balls, get them within the zone so I don’t need to depend on the fastball a lot.”
Rodon said he wasn’t sure what the pitch count could be for his next start, which is able to come after the All-Star break. Prior to Friday, he had made three rehab starts, totaling 10 ²/₃ innings before the Yankees were able to put him in a game.
“I wanna exit each time I step on the mound and put my team in a winning position,” Rodon said. “Sometimes I get somewhat amped up, somewhat bit different outside the lines but as soon as I step inside those lines, it’s one in all those refuse-to-lose attitudes.”
That didn’t quite occur Friday, albeit through little fault of his own.
But when little else went right, Rodon’s performance definitely cleared the bar.
