NEW YORK — Carlos Rodón was dealing… until he wasn’t. Fired up for his first postseason start as a Yankee, with a sellout crowd of 48,034 cheering him on, the 31-year-old lefty avoided the early pitfalls that had characterized his otherwise uneven season by turning in two very strong innings, including a 12-pitch, three-strikeout first. But after the Royals showed they could produce hard contact against him in the third, they chased him from the game with a four-run fourth, starting with a solo shot by his old nemesis, Salvador Perez, and then a trio of hits. While Rodón’s opposite number, Cole Ragans, only lasted four innings himself, the Royals bullpen stymied the Yankees, who collected just two hits across a four-inning stretch before showing signs of life again in the ninth. Their rally died out, and the Royals pulled off a 4-2 win in Monday night’s Game 2, sending the best-of-five series back to Kansas City with the two teams even at one win apiece.
After making just 14 starts in an injury-plagued 2023 season — his first under a six-year, $162 million deal, Rodón took the ball for a full complement of 32 starts, a career first — and threw a staff-high 175 innings, albeit with a 3.95 ERA and 4.39 FIP. While he ranked sixth in the AL in strikeout rate (26.5%) and ninth in K-BB% (18.8%), he was one of the most gopher-prone starters in the league, serving up 1.59 homers per nine, third highest among qualifiers. What particularly tripped up Rodón was a pronounced tendency to struggle early. He posted a 5.63 ERA and 4.92 FIP in the first and second innings while allowing 14 homers in those 64 frames, compared to a 3.00 ERA and 4.09 FIP thereafter.
On Monday he looked untouchable in the first. He caught Maikel Garcia looking at a 95.7-mph four-seamer in the lower third, whiffed Bobby Witt Jr. chasing the high cheese, and got Vinnie Pasquantino to fan chasing an outside slider in the dirt. His only blemish in the second inning was a two-out single by Michael Massey, which he negated by punching out Tommy Pham chasing a low-and-away changeup. Through two innings, he’d thrown 20 pitches, 18 for strikes, with four whiffs.
Rodón began the third inning by beating Hunter Renfroe with a 96.5-mph fastball on the inner third for his fifth strikeout, but then the Royals started making loud contact. Garrett Hampson cracked a 101-mph single to center field, and then Garcia hit a 97-mph comebacker that deflected off Rodón’s glove; the pitcher chased it down between first and second, but his low, sidearm peg to first base was too late. Witt hit a 94-mph smash to third, where Jazz Chisholm Jr. might have had time to turn two, but instead put the tag on Hampson for the second out. Pasquantino ended the inning with a 97.5-mph fly ball to right field, directly at Juan Soto.
The Yankees gave Rodón a lead to work with by continuing to grind out at-bats against Ragans, whom they’d forced to throw 24 pitches apiece in the first and second innings. Gleyber Torres started the bottom of the third by working his second walk of the night and his fourth in his first seven plate appearances of the series, but Soto struck out swinging at a slider at the lower edge of the zone, and Aaron Judge, who was still looking for his first hit in the series, flied out to right. Austin Wells poked a single to left field as Torres took second, and then Giancarlo Stanton hit a 96-mph smash that ate up Witt, skipping past him and into short left field as Torres came around to score.
The Yankees couldn’t add to that, though, and it took just three pitches from Rodón for the Royals to even things up. Perez has absolutely owned Rodón in his career, hitting .462/.481/.846 with three home runs in 27 plate appearances entering Monday night, with the most recent of those homers coming on September 9 in the Bronx. Here Rodón fell behind 2-0 and then left a slider in the middle of the zone. The big backstop — the roster’s last connection to the Royals’ 2014–15 World Series teams — launched it 402 feet to left field, the sixth postseason shot of his career.
From there the inning spiraled out of Rodón’s control. Yuli Gurriel dumped a single into left field, then took second on a wild pitch, and after a strikeout of Massey, scored on a sharp single to center by Pham, who soon stole second. Rodón notched another strikeout, but Hampson singled home Pham for a 3-1 lead, then took second on the throw home, which would lead to another run. Chisholm, who had never played third base professionally before being traded to the Yankees on July 27, was out of position on the relay.
“Now you don’t know if we’re going to cut it or not, because you’re listening. Is there a play at the plate? But that’s a play where he’s gotta be in the cut position, and that’s one of the things that I worry about,” said Boone. “Those are the little things that have to become instinctive. And that’s kind of where the work in progress comes a little bit.”
Rodón had thrown 33 pitches in the inning, and all four of the hits in the rally had come off sliders. Boone pulled him in favor of Ian Hamilton after Hampson’s knock. Garcia whacked Hamilton’s first pitch, a high slider, to right field to bring home Hampson. Garcia was tagged out in a 9-3-4-6 rundown, but suddenly the Royals had a three-run lead.
“I left some sliders up. Hittable sliders that they put some good swings on,” said Rodón. “I could’ve been better with those pitches. You know, bury those sliders.”
“I wanted to, obviously, get some swing-and-miss there,” he added. “Just trust the pitch and go attack, that’s the mindset I wish I had. Just trusting that slider, you know, whatever pitch was called.”
“I thought he was pounding the strike zone with really good stuff,” said Boone. “He falls behind [Perez], and then from there, started making some mistakes, especially with his secondary [pitches] just in the heart of the plate… just a tough inning where his command got away from him, especially some of the secondaries, because stuff wise, he was excellent tonight.”
While Rodón struck out seven hitters without walking anyone, generating 12 whiffs and a 35% CSW rate, the Royals averaged 90.6 mph on the 10 balls they put in play against him, with seven of them hard-hit balls of 95 mph or higher — that after collecting 11 hard-hit balls out of 17 against Gerrit Cole in Game 1. Over the two games, that’s a 66.7% hard-hit rate against Yankees starters.
Ragans wasn’t long for the game, either. With his fastball velocity declining and his pitch count nearing 80, he issued a leadoff walk to Anthony Volpe to start the fourth. Perez appeared to signal to the Royals bench to get the bullpen going, and while Ragans escaped without further harm, Angel Zerpa took over to start the fifth. For the night, Ragans allowed three hits and four walks while striking out five, but it amounted to just one run, a bend-but-don’t-break start reminiscent of Cole in Game 1. He threw 87 pitches, getting 13 whiffs and a 30% CSW; when the Yankees connected against him, they averaged a modest 85.1 mph.
“He just wasn’t commanding the ball,” said Quatraro. “His stuff was plenty good. He wasn’t getting swing-and-miss on the changeup… His velo was fine, he just was not able to get ahead, and they ran the pitch count up quickly.”
With a travel day looming, both managers could afford the early hooks, and the game turned into a parade of relievers who put up zeroes. Prior to the ninth inning, the closest either side came to scoring was in the sixth, when the Royals got something going against Jake Cousins while putting the Yankees’ makeshift infield into the spotlight.
After moving to the hot corner upon his late-July trade to the Yankees, Chisholm took to the position quite well, with 4 FRV (and -2 DRS) in 400 1/3 innings during the regular season, and in Game 1 he made several strong plays with long throws across the diamond. When Gurriel led off the sixth in Game 2 by hitting a grounder deep behind third base, Chisholm fielded the ball cleanly, but made an offline throw to first baseman Jon Berti, who himself was making his major league debut at the position. With Anthony Rizzo off the roster due to a pair of fractured fingers, the Yankees had gotten Berti up to speed during their days off prior to the series, and Boone chose Monday to play him instead of Game 1 starter Oswaldo Cabrera. Massey walked, and then Gurriel took third on Pham’s deep fly to right field. With Quatraro sending up lefty MJ Melendez to pinch-hit for Renfroe, Boone countered with lefty Tim Hill. Melendez hit a low 105-mph liner that a diving Berti speared, then recovered and ran to first base to complete the unassisted double play. “Heck of a play,” said Boone.
Thus Zerpa and John Schreiber each turned in a hitless, scoreless inning, while Kris Bubic worked two frames; the two singles he allowed, one to Game 1 hero Alex Verdugo to lead off the seventh and the other an infield single to Judge to lead off the eighth, both went for naught, with Witt turning in a 6-3 double play on a Stanton grounder that, sadly, highlighted the aging slugger’s third-percentile speed.
The Yankees finally put a second run on the board in the ninth, when Chisholm clubbed a 99.9-mph Lucas Erceg four-seamer deep to right field; unlike the Yankees’ two homers to right on Saturday, his 375-foot drive was no Short Porch Special, as it would have been out in all but one of the 30 ballparks.
It wasn’t enough. Erceg recovered to get both Volpe and Verdugo to ground out. Despite having Cabrera — who was decent against righties this season — on the bench Boone allowed Berti to bat. He flared a single to right field to bring the tying run to the plate in the form of Torres, but in marked contrast to the patience he’d shown earlier in the night and in Game 1, he swung at the first pitch, a sinker on the inner black of the plate, and hit a weak grounder.
For a series that promised a marquee matchup between the likely AL MVP in Judge and the likely runner-up in Witt — a pair that ranked first and second in the majors in WAR, with 11.2 and 10.4, respectively — the two superstars have been kept in check. Judge is 1-for-7 with two walks and four strikeouts, while Witt is 0-for-10 with four strikeouts. For the Royals, it’s been their light hitters who have come through. Hampson, who hit just .230/.275/.300 (59 wRC+ during the season) is 3-for-3 with three RBI. Garcia, who had a .280 OBP out of the leadoff spot, the second-lowest mark of anybody with at least 200 PA there, was 4-for-5 from that slot in Game 2. Gurriel, who hit just .241/.338/.296 (83 wRC+) after being picked up by the Royals in late August, is 2-for-6 with a pair of walks and the reached-on-error, and four runs scored. For all the analysis that we may want to impose on the game, it still has the capacity to surprise us, particularly in a short series.
