He was not exactly facing Murderers’ Row, but the opponent has often not mattered for Carlos Rodon as a Yankee.
On Tuesday, it was the Marlins in front of him, and Rodon mowed them down for one of his best starts in pinstripes.
Rodon took a shutout into the seventh inning before running into some trouble (only part of which was his own doing), but it was enough to send the Yankees to a 3-2 win over the Marlins in The Bronx.
“A step in the right direction today,” Rodon said after giving up a pair of unearned runs over six-plus innings with six strikeouts. “Just keep going. The confidence is growing, for sure.”
The Yankees are now off to a 10-2 start, matching their best in franchise history through 12 decisions after also doing it in 1922, 1949 and 2003 — three seasons that each ended in a trip to the World Series.
“It’s huge. This is the way we expect to play,” said Alex Verdugo, who put the Yankees ahead in the second inning with his first home run to the short porch as a Yankee. “To come out of spring training, back it up and do what we did against not light competition by any means — we’ve been facing some good teams. This is what you have to do early and throughout the whole year: win series.”
Building off of Nestor Cortes’ eight shutout innings against the Marlins (1-11) on Monday night, Rodon completed six scoreless innings for the first time as a Yankee (in his 17th start with the team).
Though he couldn’t finish on a high note, leaving with the bases loaded and no outs in the seventh after a walk, an error and an infield single, he still walked off the mound to a standing ovation.
Ian Hamilton relieved Rodon and got a groundout and a flyout (sacrifice fly) to let the Marlins pull within 3-2. But Hamilton stranded the tying run at second base and then tossed a scoreless eighth.
Clay Holmes finished it off with a seventh-pitch ninth inning for the save.
“It’s pretty easy to give the ball to Ian Hamilton, to be honest, and our bullpen, because they’re pretty good,” Rodon said.
Through three starts, Rodon has a 1.72 ERA across 15 ²/₃ innings.
It is still early, but there are enough signs that he can be a different pitcher than he was in his miserable first year in The Bronx.
On a night when his fastball velocity was down a tick, Rodon mixed in a healthy dose of cutters (15) and changeups (10) to go with his regular four-seam/slider combination.
He got three whiffs on the changeup and used the cutter to induce some ground balls, including a double play in the fifth inning.
“Throwing in that changeup, I feel like he’s really pitching now with the four-seamer, the cutter, the changeup and slider,” Verdugo said. “The biggest thing is usually he’s a fastball-slider guy so guys can kind of take their chance and open up a little bit more. Because righties, everything’s coming into them. Lefties, everything’s going away. Just to add that changeup against righties, it humbles and balances it out a little bit. Can’t have guys cheating. It just forces them to be a lot more accurate with their barrel. He’s been lights out.”
After Verdugo’s early homer, the Yankees added to the lead with Giancarlo Stanton’s RBI double the other way in the fifth and Juan Soto’s RBI single in the sixth.
That was enough for Rodon to clinch the Yankees’ fourth series victory in as many tries.
“He’s in a really good space right now and he’s earned that,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Just three starts but good results, and it’s a result of a talented guy being prepared and ready.”
