Carlos Rodón gave up three home runs tonight. That won’t shock Yankees fans, who know all about his long ball troubles. Rodón gave up 31 homers in the regular season — tied for the second-most in the majors with the Toronto Blue Jays’ Jose Berrios and just behind the Boston Red Sox’s Kutter Crawford at 34.
The problem was actually worse last year, when he gave up 2.1 homers per nine innings. (This year, that total was down to a still-ugly 1.6 HR/9.)
For Rodón, it’s about location. He has one of the better fastballs in baseball when he puts it where he wants. The issue: Often, he leaves it over the plate, and big leaguers eat that for lunch. On Saturday, all three of the homers he surrendered were via fastball.
During the season, Rodón tinkered with his arsenal, at times mixing in changeups, curveballs and cutters with his bread-and-butter fastball-slider combo. Tonight? Not so much. He threw fastballs 60 percent of the time. His slider was used 22 percent of the time.