Rodón unable to keep LA off the heater

LOS ANGELES -- Ahead of his Game 2 starting assignment, Yankees left-hander Carlos Rodón spoke about his confidence in his overpowering fastball after he had dominated a contact-oriented Guardians lineup with that heater to kick off the American League Championship Series.

But this assignment brought the Los Angeles Dodgers, who take that to another level.

“This lineup is pretty potent,” Rodón said before the start. “They can definitely swing it, and they have a good idea what the strike zone is.”

Yes, yes and … most certainly, yes.

That scouting report proved prescient ahead of Rodón’s short start on Saturday night. The Dodgers controlled the zone. They swung at the fastballs. And boy, were those swings potent, with all three Dodgers homers in Rodón’s 3 1/3 innings coming against the fastball -- including the back-to-back blasts in the third inning by Teoscar Hernández and Freddie Freeman that sent Dodger Stadium into an ear-splitting frenzy.

That Dodgers dominance of Rodón’s heater swung the needle firmly away from New York early in Game 2 -- and the Yankees never pulled it back in their 4-2 loss that pushed them into a 2-0 hole in the best-of-seven Fall Classic.

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“I got to some good spots on some fastballs,” Rodón said. “But they were just up there with me and made some good swings. They're good hitters.”

Consider this: The Dodgers swung the bat 32 times against Rodón, and 22 of those swings came against the fastball -- more than two-thirds of them. They missed once, the fewest swinging strikes Rodón had gotten with his heater in any start since 2020. He’d gotten 11 and six whiffs with that fastball in his two ALCS outings against Cleveland.

Three of the four balls the Dodgers put in play in the first inning were against the fastball -- and all three went for outs. But that was a sign of the approach to come.

The next six Rodón fastballs put in play? Homer, single, homer, homer, double, 98 mph lineout.

Tommy Edman continued his scorching-hot playoff run when he opened the scoring in the second by yanking a 2-0 fastball 355 feet into the left-field bleachers. And after Mookie Betts knocked a two-out single in the third, Hernández went upstairs on a 1-0 fastball and crushed it 392 feet to right-center.

Freeman, the hero of Game 1, battled to a full count before turning on a fastball, up and in, and blasting that, too, 401 feet.

Notice a pattern there? Rodón was behind in the count on every one of those.

“We talk about this Dodger team being really good in leverage when they get ahead in the count,” Yankees skipper Aaron Boone said. “They just were able to get to [the fastball] in favorable counts.”

Rodón threw his fastball a tick under half the time (49.4%) this regular season -- but when he’s behind in the count, he’s turned to that heater a much higher 63.1% of the time.

And this is what happens when Rodón struggles -- his fastball gets blasted, as opposing batters hit .262 and slugged .514 against the pitch this season, responsible for 21 of the 31 homers Rodón allowed this year.

With the way this Dodgers lineup controls the zone and takes tough offspeed pitches, Rodón was already facing an uphill battle, because his game relies, to an extent, on opposing hitters swinging at the sliders and changeups out of the zone to help his fastball play up. When the Dodgers were patient and the offspeed wasn’t located as well, Rodón’s fastball was in trouble.

“I think I missed down on some curveballs and some sliders that were just up and out of the zone,” Rodón said. “If I'd showed some presence with the offspeed, I probably would have gotten them off the heater. But they did a good job at getting to those fastballs up in the zone, and they put some really good swings on them.”

Listen to Freeman explain essentially that exact thought process as he laid off the sliders and waited for the fastball to come in his chess match with Rodón during that third inning:

“I got to the 1-2 count, and I took a slider, and it was kind of a hard take, is what we call it, kind of jumpy,” Freeman said. “Figured with that kind of take, he was going to throw me another one. So I was kind of looking for it and was able to see it kind of good. So after that take, I was like, ‘I think he's going to go something somewhere else.’ So he kind of went up and in with the heater.”

And even on a pitch that Rodón thought he put high enough on the zone with ride, a former MVP sitting on fastball in the zone made him pay.

He didn’t get much help from the Yankees’ bats, which mustered only one hit until a last-ditch attempt at a rally in the ninth with three hits off reliever Blake Treinen. The continued struggles of Aaron Judge, sloppiness in the field and the like that have followed the Yankees throughout these playoffs certainly played their part, too.

“The fastball is starting to work,” Rodón said he thought at some point during that ALCS Game 1 start against Cleveland, as he notched the third-most swinging strikes of any start in his career.

But on Saturday, the Dodgers’ lineup got the better of it.