The Yankees signed Carlos Rodon to a $162 million deal to be co-aces with Gerrit Cole, a 1B to the 1A in Cole, who lived up to his own investment in game one despite the heartbreaking loss in extra innings.
Rodon needed to be that 1B in game two to send the World Series back to the Bronx tied at one apiece rather than a daunting 0-2 hole.
The Rodon experience through two seasons in New York has been a roller coaster, but through his previous two playoff starts, the lefty looked like he had found something with his new, even-keeled approach, prioritizing emotional containment, allowing just three combined runs and one walk against 15 strikeouts in 10.2 innings of work.
That’s the Rodon the Yanks needed in game two. Instead, they got the worst of Rodon, the version that showed itself all-too often in his miserable debut season, and the one that suddenly appeared in the fourth inning of his Yankees playoff debut.
Rodon was tagged for four runs in 3.1 innings, allowing three home runs and seven batted balls of 100 mph or more. When the Yankees needed a shutdown inning in the third after Juan Soto tied the game with a solo shot of his own, Rodon served up a two-run home run to Teoscar Hernandez to give the lead right back to the Dodgers, then allowed a home run to Freddie Freeman on the very next batter, throwing a fastball in nearly the same spot that Freeman cranked for a walk-off grand slam in game one.
The long ball has been Rodon’s most glaring weakness since arriving in New York, and that was back to being front and center at the worst possible time. His other prominent deficiency has been his ability to grind through tough innings and maintain his composure, as he himself has admitted to struggling at times to keep his emotions in check. The Yanks needed a composed Rodon, but instead, his mistakes snowballed into further disasters, and with the way Yoshinobu Yamamoto was dealing, the game felt out of reach by the time Rodon trudged to the dugout, his night over after lasting just one out into the fourth inning.
The Yanks needed Rodon at his best to grab home field advantage and wash away the bad taste of a disastrous loss in game one. Instead, they will now have to overcome Rodon’s clunker and try to avoid the Fall Classic becoming a short series.