Carlos Rodon may be slowly becoming the pitcher the Yankees thought they were getting when they signed him before last season.
No, he’s still not back to the level that made the left-hander one of the most effective starters in the game in both 2021 and 2022, but he’s played in all but one game this year. It was solid or better.
In Wednesday’s 9-4 win over the Astros in the Bronx, Rodon bounced back from his worst start of the year in Baltimore, where he allowed seven runs and three home runs.
Rodon held the Astros to just two runs in 6¹/₃ innings against a Houston team that looked like a shell of the team that had advanced to the ALCS every year since 2017.
He didn’t walk any batters and had seven strikeouts, thanks in large part to a particularly deceptive slider.
He has thrown pitches more often than usual this season, and was able to use his slider to escape the one tight spot he faced. He struck out Kyle Tucker and ended the top of the fifth inning with runners on the corners, giving the Yankees a one-run lead. 4 runs.
“He was really good and whiffed a lot,” Aaron Boone said. “He did a better job than he had all year in making count decisions. I liked how much he got into the strike zone.”
Rodon believes his ability to attack the strike zone has improved since his last game.
“I wanted to get into the zone more than last time,” said Rodon, who is 2-0 with a 1.86 ERA in his first three home games this year.
“I was able to get ahead and go to the slider.”
Rodon began to tire in the seventh inning, allowing a one-out double to Mauricio Dubon and a strong RBI triple to Jake Myers, ending a night in which he faced the top of the lineup for the fourth time.
Caleb Ferguson stopped Myers at third base, and Rodon helped limit the Astros to two runs.
This season, Rodon has allowed more than two goals just twice in eight starts.
One of the other differences between this season and his disastrous first season with the Yankees is the fact that Rodon is getting more ground balls than he did a year ago.
Still, the 31-year-old fell short in 2021 with the White Sox and 2022 with San Francisco.
That pitcher is what led the Yankees to invest six years and $162 million in him.
“He’s in good shape and it’s a credit to all the work he’s done,” Boone said. “It started early in the offseason with his work on pitching, conditioning, everything to put himself in a position to give himself a chance to be successful. is seeing the results.”
