Carlos Rodon Coughs Up Another Game

The Yankees had a chance to win the series against the Giants, but Carlos Rodon did what Carlos Rodon does - he gave up a couple killer homers and San Francisco won the rubber match. That’s two series losses in a row for the Yankees who are now 8-7. Lets get to it.

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How many times are we going to watch this happen with Carlos Rodon?

Once again Sunday in the finale of the weather-plagued series with the Giants, Rodon was sailing along and had the Yankees in a good position going into the sixth inning with a 3-1 lead. But then it happened, because it always seems to happen with Rodon, the game-losing implosion for which he ought to apply for a patent.

He had given up only one hit through five, a solo homer by major pain in the ass Jung Hoo Lee who killed the Yankees all weekend. But then in the sixth, a silly little infield single that Anthony Volpe couldn’t handle, a one-out walk, and then a terrible curveball to Lee which he deposited in the right-field bleachers for a go-ahead three-run homer.

“Just a terrible execution on a curveball that he punished,” Rodón said. “I’m frustrated with two-strike pitches that end up in the zone. I just need to be better executing those, because these are big league hitters. They’re some of the best hitters in the world, and they’re punishing them.”

It’s truly amazing how fast things go to shit for Rodon. Maddening, really. And the thing is with him, his mistakes are usually too difficult to overcome because his mistakes are the worst ones - gopher balls. Since he made his Yankees debut on July 7, 2023, Rodon has pitched in 50 games and he has surrendered 51 home runs, most in MLB, and that’s tied with JA Happ for the most in any player’s first 50 games with the Yankees.

“It’s that small of a separator between him being in a dominant position right now,” Aaron Boone said. “The reality is, we’ve got to look at it as, he’s throwing the ball incredibly well. It’s that next level of avoiding that - today, it’s one (pitch).”

With the injury decimation of the starting rotation, Rodon had to step into a big-time role behind new ace Max Fried, and he has not done it. He has now been the losing pitcher in his last three starts and his ERA is an ugly 5.48.

In his loss to Arizona, he allowed four runs in the first two innings and the Yankees were dead because they had no chance against Zac Gallen. In Detroit, two walks in the third inning were followed by a killer three-run homer and again, with the Yankees’ offense impotent, the game was done. And then Sunday, Lee’s three-run homer ruined an otherwise decent day during which he struck out eight.

“I thought the stuff was excellent,” Boone said. “He had swing-and-miss with everything. He had a presence with everything. But obviously a three-run homer hurt us today.”

Yeah, and that’s the issue just about every time Rodon takes the mound.

April 11: Giants 9, Yankees 1

➤ I find it pretty appropriate that the jersey number Marcus Stroman wears is zero, because when he’s on the mound, the Yankees basically have zero chance to win a game. At least now that his number zero is on the injured list and he’s probably going to miss at least a month with the knee inflammation he complained about after this debacle, that should raise the Yankees’ chances of winning because Clarke Schmidt is due to join the team and pitch in Stroman’s next slot.

➤ I think this sudden knee inflammation was a wonderful excuse for the Yankees to put Stroman on the 15-day IL and be rid of him for a little while because he simply can’t pitch in the big leagues anymore. This was a deplorable performance and I don’t give a shit about the knee which also provided him a convenient way to escape the media after the game. Stroman has been awful in all three of his starts, and the Yankees’ are better off without him for however long he misses.

➤ Yes, the weather was horrific, and this game probably should not have been played; I don’t know why this couldn’t be part of a day/night doubleheader on Sunday. So I get that it was a tough night for everyone, especially the pitchers, though San Francisco’s Robbie Ray didn’t seem to have too much trouble. Stroman was unwatchable. By the time he recorded an out, the first six Giants had reached base and five of them had scored, three on Lee’s three-run homer as he got his great weekend started very quickly. And then Stroman couldn’t even finish the inning and Boone sent him to the showers after 46 non-competitive pitches. Shame on Wilmer Flores for striking out against this bum.

➤ Stroman’s ERA is now sitting at 11.57 and by the end of play Friday, the Yankees’ starting rotation ERA of 5.46 was the worst in MLB. Remember, this is a league where the White Sox, Rockies and Marlins exist. Dating back to June 1, 2024, no pitcher who has thrown at least 90 innings has a worse ERA than Stroman’s 6.38.

➤ This was the first of 13 straight days the Yankees were scheduled to play, so the best part about this game is that it was called in the top of the sixth inning which saved the Yankees’ soon-to-be-tired bullpen from having to get the final 10 outs. That was about the only positive I could pull from this one.

➤ As for the offense, it continued to struggle because too many guys have gone into awful slumps. In the first eight games (6-2), the Yankees scored 72 runs and in the five games since (1-4) they scored 11. Jazz Chisholm, Cody Bellinger, Austin Wells, and Jasson Dominguez have been mostly useless for the last week.

What they said in Friday’s clubhouse

• Boone on the starting pitching: “We’ve got to do better. We’ve struggled to this point. Again … it’s 13 games in, but we’ve got to night-in, night-out pitch a little bit better.”

• Boone on Stroman: “I think the movement qualities are there. Again, it’s less margin for error (because of his lack of velocity), and there’s probably some adjustments we can all make with him that hopefully allow him to go out there and be effective because the stuff’s not much different than the first half of last season to the second half to now. We got to execute a little better.”

• Boone on the horrendous weather: “(Bench coach Brad) Ausmus and I were just talking, and that’s probably the worst conditions we’ve ever experienced. And we’ve been doing this a long time.”

• Bellinger on the offense: “It’s the ups and downs of the season. No excuses. We’d all like to not be in this position, but we’ll keep fighting to be better. It’s a long year, and these are the kinds of things you have to fight through.”

April 12: Yankees 8, Giants 4

➤ Props to Will Warren for not sucking for the first time in his brief MLB career as he earned his first career victory. He overcame allowing a two-run homer in the second to Flores which tied the game at 2-2 and buckled down to retire 10 men in a row. That streak ended with a walk in the fifth, but he whiffed Mike Yastrzemski to close the inning and Boone turned the game over to the bullpen for the final 12 outs.

➤ Warren got the win because in that fifth inning the Yankees exploded for five runs, the type of inning we haven’t seen for about a week. The first five men reached base on Giants starter Jordan Hicks as Ben Rice, Aaron Judge and Bellinger singled for the first run, Paul Goldschmidt doubled in the second, Volpe hit a sacrifice fly, and then the big at bat in my eyes was Dominguez coming through with a two-run opposite field single to left that blew it open to 7-2. Dominguez had been 0-for-15.

➤ The Yankees started well as Judge singled in the first and scored on Bellinger’s wind-aided triple to left, and he scored on Goldschmidt’s sacrifice fly. And in the sixth, after the Giants had pulled within 7-4, Rice homered for the final run. At day’s end Rice was hitting .409 against righties with a 1.431 OPS and he’s 6-for-18 as the leadoff hitter.

➤ I said this the other day, but Fernando Cruz is either really good or really bad and in this one, it was the latter, though in between giving up a single and a walk he was hurt by a careless error by Chisholm. With the bases load and no outs he retired two men and that would have been enough to escape if not for the error, and with that extra out the Giants cashed in as Flores ripped a two-run single.

➤ Luke Weaver entered and ended the rally, pitched a scoreless seventh, and his ERA remains 0.00. Mark Leiter put two men on in the eighth but escaped, and then the high-wire act that is Devin Williams started the ninth with a walk and a double and I’m sure like me, your eyes started rolling. However, he struck out two tough hitters in Lee and Matt Chapman and got Heliot Ramos to ground out to end it, so let’s hope this is a turning point for the closer.

What they said in Saturday’s clubhouse

• Warren on getting his first win: “It’s a big accomplishment. I’ve been waiting a while to get that one off the table, so it was fun.”

• Boone on the offense: “It was a really good offensive performance. I felt like up and down, we had a lot of good at-bats. We were able to really lean on the big inning and get it home from there. I mean, it was 15 degrees last week (in Detroit). We can bang; these guys can bang.”

• Boone on Williams: “It’s a little bit of a rough start for him, and then obviously, he goes walk and hit and doesn’t crumble. He just goes, ‘OK, I’m really good at this.’ He made pitches and leaves runners stranded. It was really good execution. For him to have his back up against the wall right away and not flinch and answer was good to see. We’re gonna look up eventually, and he’s gonna be rolling.”

April 13: Giants 5, Yankees 4

➤ The day started well enough. While Rodon was retiring 10 of the first 11 men he faced, the Yankees gave him a 3-0 lead. Judge doubled in the first and scored on a single by Goldschmidt, and then in the second, back-to-back doubles by Dominguez and JC Escarra produced one run, and Rice singled home Escarra. The RBI and run scored were the first of Escarra’s career.

➤ And then the Yankees did not get another hit until Chisholm - who had been 0-for-24 - homered in the eighth. It’s pretty tough to win when you go more than five innings with no hits. They had a chance in the fourth against Giants ace Logan Webb when Volpe and Dominguez walked, but Webb mowed down the next three men to kill the threat. In the sixth, Judge and Goldschmidt walked but Chisholm and Volpe failed to bring them in and those wasted opportunities proved critical in a one-run loss.

➤ After Rodon exited, Leiter gave up a double in the seventh to Casey Schmitt and he scored what proved to be the winning run when Christian Koss ripped a grounder through Goldschmidt who was charged with an error as Schmitt raced home.

Man of the people Nick Turturro sums up the first two-plus weeks pretty well here:

What they said in Sunday’s clubhouse

• Boone updating Stroman’s situation: “Hoping it’s not long. The MRI was good, but he had some swelling in there somewhere. Trying to eliminate that, hopefully get him ramped up pretty quick and hopefully it’s something that really helps him moving forward.”

• Chisholm on the cold weather: “It’s been the worst for me. I’m from the Bahamas. I’m used to the warm weather. That’s probably the coldest I’ve ever played in this past week, especially to go five games in a row. But at the end of the day, this is my job, and this is what I get paid to do. In my contract, it doesn’t say, ‘I don’t play in less than 40 degrees.’”

• Rice on his success in the leadoff spot: “I think the biggest thing is when you move to a certain spot in the order, you’re probably there for a reason. I think the biggest thing is really not to change too much.”

The team the Yankees beat in the AL wild-card round last season, the resurgent Royals, are in next for three games to begin this week at the stadium. It has been a sluggish start at the plate up and down the lineup and Kansas City (8-8) has an MLB-low eight home runs and it’s team OPS of .605 is fourth-worst. Think about that, eight home runs in 16 games. The Yankees hit nine in the second game of the season! The Royals have covered up some of their offensive struggles with fine pitching as their staff ERA of 3.14 ranks fourth.

Here are some of the best Royals to watch:

➤ SS Bobby Witt: He’s one of the best all-around players in MLB and he’s off to a good start leading the team in hitting (.305) and OPS (.849), but oddly he has only one home run.

➤ 1B Vinnie Pasquantino: The slugger leads the team with 11 RBI but has only two homers and his OPS is just .690.

➤ C Salvador Perez: The old guy just keeps going. He’s not hitting much yet either which is a theme with this team, but he did hit a two-run homer that tied the game in what became a 4-2 victory over the Guardians.

➤ RP Lucas Erceg: This is a pitcher that I’m still pissed the Yankees didn’t get at the trade deadline last year. Instead, the Royals pried him from the A’s and he’s an absolute beast. So far as Royals’ main setup man he has pitched 6.2 scoreless innings with a 0.474 WHIP.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

• Monday, 7:05, YES: Carlos Carrasco (7.71 ERA) vs. Seth Lugo (3.24) who joined the Royals last year and won a career-high 16 games, had an ERA of 3.00 in 206.2 innings, and finished second in the AL Cy Young vote;

• Tuesday, 7:05, YES: Max Fried (1.56) vs. Michael Wacha (4.20), another 2024 free agent signee who overachieved with a 3.35 ERA but made two ho-hum starts in the postseason and was the losing pitcher in the deciding Game 4;

• Wednesday, 7:05, Amazon Prime: Clarke Schmidt (debut) vs. Kris Bubic (0.96) who came up as a starter, worked out of the bullpen in 2024, and now is back in the rotation and has been dominant in three starts.