NEW YORK – It was the sixth inning on Sunday and Carlos Rodón stood on the mound, baseball resting in his glove, as the Yankees discussed their plan against hot-hitting Jung Hoo Lee. All day long, an electric slider had been the left-hander’s favorite weapon, but the last one he threw to this particular batter had landed in the seats.
Lee would be looking for that pitch again, they reasoned, so it would be best to keep it holstered. Rodón first attacked with four fastballs, then hung a curveball that Lee parked for a go-ahead three-run homer, representing the difference in the Yankees’ 5-4 loss to the Giants at Yankee Stadium.
“I’m frustrated with two-strike pitches that end up in the zone,” Rodón said. “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.”
Looking back on that at-bat, both Rodón and manager Aaron Boone said they wouldn’t second-guess the pitch selection of a 1-2 curve. Rather, it was the snap on a 81.7 mph offering that Rodón called “terrible,” a floating hook that Lee dispatched toward the first row in right-center field.
“He’s been swinging it well,” catcher J.C. Escarra said of Lee. “He hadn’t seen the curveball all game. We really went after him with the sinker and the fastball. We had him with two strikes. We wanted to get him chasing and punch him out.”
Boone acknowledged that Rodón is “prone to the long ball,” though that’s an understatement: Since July 7, 2023, the date of Rodón’s Yankees debut, he leads the Majors with 51 home runs allowed across 50 starts.
Having homered in Friday’s series opener as well, Lee’s big weekend spoiled what was shaping up to be Rodón’s best outing of the young season, facing his former club for the first time. Striking out eight, Rodón didn’t allow a hit until Lee’s first homer, San Francisco’s only knock against him through five innings.
“It’s that small of a separator between him being in a dominant position right now,” 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].”
“When you think of him,” said Giants manager Bob Melvin, “it’s fastballs at the top of the zone. Today, it was a ton of breaking balls in off counts, too. We made him work a little bit.”
Rodón’s troubles were sparked in the sixth by Christian Koss’ first Major League hit, a grounder that trickled past shortstop Anthony Volpe.
A one-out walk to Willy Adames preceded the at-bat against Lee. After his previous start in Detroit, Rodón had said he was “definitely tired” of issuing free passes, a stance he reiterated on Sunday: “It’s just frustrating, once again, to fall behind guys. We had the momentum. It’s got to be better.”
The Yankees peppered right-hander Logan Webb for three quick runs, beginning in the first inning, when Aaron Judge doubled off the center-field fence, advanced on a groundout and scored on Paul Goldschmidt’s opposite-field single.
Escarra picked up his first Major League RBI in the second inning, doubling home Jasson Domínguez, then scored on Ben Rice’s RBI single. But Webb shut down the Yanks’ bats from there, blanking New York over the next three frames.
“To get three runs off of [Webb] and get him out of there after five, you sign up for that,” Boone said.
Hitless in his previous 24 at-bats, Jazz Chisholm Jr. made it a one-run game in the eighth, connecting off sidearmer Tyler Rogers for his fifth homer of the season.
Chisholm said the weather conditions of the Yanks’ previous five games may have played a part in his slump. He said he has been lathering up with petroleum jelly and other creams found in the trainers’ room, hoping to dull the effects of the bitter cold.
“It’s been the worst for me,” Chisholm said. “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.’”