The Yankees eked out a win on Thursday to avoid being swept by the Guardians, largely on the back of an excellent start from Carlos Rodón. Rodón held Cleveland to a run on two hits and three walks against seven strikeouts in six innings. That makes it three straight starts by the veteran southpaw of at least five innings and just one run allowed, lowering his season ERA to 2.88 through five outings. There as a moment in the fourth inning that I felt showcased the Rodón of old, earning the nod for Sequence of the Week.
We join Rodón with no outs in the top of the fourth, facing Travis Bazzana. There are runners on first and second and no one out after José Ramírez led off with a single followed by a Rhys Hoskins walk. Bazzana was selected first overall in the 2024 MLB Draft, made his debut at the end of April, and has been one of the Guardians’ most productive hitters with a 128 wRC+ entering play, lauded for his bat-to-ball skills and all fields approach. Given the way the Yankees offense had been struggling in the wake of Aaron Judge’s broken rib, it became imperative that Rodón silence this threat.
Rodón starts Bazzana with an elevated 96 mph four-seamer.
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This is exactly the type of fastball that Rodón was known for at the very peak of his powers — high velocity, late life, and pinpointed right to the top shelf of the strike zone. Bazzana has no shot at catching up with this heater and whiffs underneath it late.
Now that Bazzana has shown a willingness to swing at a fastball up and in, the logical follow-up pitch would be a slider down and away that starts down a similar tunnel before dropping off the table late.
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Unfortunately, Rodón is a little too high with his release point. The slider therefore exits his hand looking like a ball well above the strike zone and never looks like a strike during its path toward home, making for an easy take from Bazzana.
Given how good the first pitch fastball must have felt coming out of Rodón’s hand, it is no surprise to see him return to the heat here to get back ahead in the count after the mis-executed slider.
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He nails almost the exact same location as the first four-seamer he threw and the end result is effectively the same. Bazzana is late with his swing and underneath a pitch that just doesn’t drop as much as he is expecting thanks to its excellent life, fouling it back over the screen for strike two.
With the count to two strikes, Rodón instantly goes for the kill with his typical put-away pitch against lefties — the slider low and away. The question is whether he can make the mid-AB adjustment from the first one he threw.
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The answer, as it turns out, was no. Rodón sails another slider, this one even worse than the first. It’s almost like the pitch slips out of his hand with how high it lands. This is about as non-competitive a 1-2 slider as you are going to see and about as automatic a take as Bazzana could hope for with the count leverage so overwhelmingly not in his favor.
Following two substantial misses with the slider this AB, I’ll admit I was surprised to see Rodón double up on the pitch in this spot.
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That’s now three sliders and three pieces of poor execution. This pitch starts aimed at Bazzana’s front shoulder, the late glove-side movement and Bazzana’s evasive maneuvers combining to prevent this from being a hit-by-pitch.
Rodón has worked himself into a spot of bother with those two sliders, going from fully in the driver’s seat, 1-2, to being a ball away from walking the bases loaded with no outs. It becomes obvious from this point forward that all Bazzana is going to see is four-seamers, a fact of which I’m sure the hitter is fully aware. That being said, Bazzana has not shown in this encounter that he has the ability to put Rodón’s fastball in play, provided that Rodón keeps hitting his spot at the top of the zone.
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That’s exactly what Rodón does, unleashing his third perfectly executed four-seamer of the AB. This pitch just nips the top of the zone, meaning Bazzana has to swing or risk being punched out looking. However, he has not made the adjustment to his swing path to be able to get on top of this pitch, and once again all he is able to do is fight it off foul despite knowing exactly what is coming.
With Bazzana’s eyes clearly set for the elevated four-seamer but with no other pitch he can reasonably throw in this spot, there is an opportunity for Rodón to exploit what Bazzana is hunting by climbing the ladder a little higher than the previous pitch, in effect throwing the pitch that the hitter wants him to but in a spot that is just out of reach.
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Talk about a literal perfect pitch. Rodón elevates this four-seamer ever so slightly higher than the previous one, and this time Bazzana can’t fight it off to stay alive. This is such an enticing pitch given it is over the plate, and it’s close enough to the top shelf of the zone that Bazzana is forced to swing. But Rodón commands it inside enough such that the hitter is not given a chance to get extended, which would make it easier to foul off, and the heater handcuffs Bazzana as he whiffs underneath for a huge first out of the inning.
Here’s the full sequence:
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This snapshot is as good as I can remember Rodón’s four-seamer in pinstripes. Over the spring, he talked about how the bone spurs were preventing him from really letting lose and throwing the pitch with full conviction in 2025. The pitch currently sports its highest whiff rate (25%) during his time with the Yankees with a little extra velocity and almost an inch less drop than last year, taking the pitch from a 104 Stuff+ grade to 108.
This was also a bit of a “welcome to the big leagues” moment of sorts for Bazzana, who has been otherwise great thus far for the Guardians. Look at that tight grouping of heaters at top of strike zone. The final four-seamer for the strikeout was 97 mph with 18 inches of induced vertical break, both elite marks that the Cleveland rookie will have to get used to seeing in the majors. Bazzana has done most of his damage off the off-speed in his young career, so the attack plan of heaters up and me confirms that Rodón and J.C. Escarra read the scouting report.
Lastly, I liked seeing the mid-game adjustment when it became obvious Rodón had no feel for the slider. Most of his sliders including the three in this AB sailed high, which tells me that Rodón hasn’t quite found the release point that made the pitch so deadly last year. It looks to me that he’s not quite finishing the pitch all the way out in front, which should be something to monitor in his next start. All the same, this AB tells me that Rodón is pretty much all the way back from his injury and can even improve upon his stellar results from last year, which would make it four straight seasons of getting better than the year before.
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