Sequence of the Week: Carlos Rodón (All-Star Game)

Photo by New York Yankees/Getty Images

All-Star weekend was a success with plenty of drama befitting the occasion, including a tape-measure tiebreaker in the Home Run Derby and a first time ever swing-off tiebreaker in the All-Star Game. The Yankees sent four players to Atlanta — Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr. on the position player side and Max Fried and Carlos Rodón on the pitching side. Rodón snuck in as an alternate after Fried pulled out with a finger blister, and it’s a good thing he got the nod as he gave us our pick for Sequence

of the Week.

We join Rodón facing Francisco Lindor with one out in the second inning, the National League having opened the scoring off Tarik Skubal in the first on a Ketel Marte two-run double. Hitters are likely expecting pitchers to go max effort with guys typically getting just an inning of work, so Rodón tries to play off this expectation by starting Lindor off with a back-foot slider.

The pitch doesn’t quite get to the back foot, but he still has Lindor fooled. The Mets shortstop thinks Rodón will try to blow his doors off with a first-pitch heater, so he swings early and out over the plate on a pitch that looks like a center-cut fastball out of the hand before it dives down and in off the underside of his bat foul.

Now that Rodón has slowed Lindor’s bat down with the first-pitch slider, it should make the following fastball all the more effective.

That’s just what happens — the prior slider has planted the seed that a pitch that starts out over the plate won’t necessarily end there so that by the time Lindor is able to diagnose this as a fastball, it’s too late to make clean contact and he has to fire off an emergency hack to foul it off. It also helps that this pitch is thrown at 95 mph and is dotted just above the strike zone, that command forcing the hitter to swing to protect.

Rodón’s gotten it to 0-2 without much effort and he goes in for the kill with the very next pitch, hoping to get Lindor to chase a changeup diving down and away.

This is excellent execution of the pitch beaten by an even better take from the hitter. Lindor hardly flinches on a change that hover on the outside edge of the zone for most of its journey toward the plate so he must have gotten a good read right out of Rodón’s hand.

Seeing Lindor’s complete disinterest in offering at a pitch just out of the zone away, there’s an opportunity for Rodón to steal a called strike three if he can pinpoint one to the corner low and away.

Rodón isn’t far off from nailing his spot, but once again Lindor makes a close pitch look like an easy take as this heater lands just off the plate away for ball two.

There’s no need for Rodón to switch up the plan of attack given the previous two takes. Just locate a pitch in the zone in the same quadrant he’s been targeting and it should be job done.

This time, Rodón executes just the pitch he intended. It’s clear Lindor is still sitting on a pitch on the inner-half as he recognizes too late that this low and away fastball has remained in the zone — the pitch popping Cal Raleigh’s mitt as Lindor’s bat enters the hitting zone.

Here’s the full sequence:

It seemed like Rodón was a step ahead of Lindor this entire sequence. He got Lindor to swing early at the first-pitch slider, late on a fastball for strike two, and late again for the punch out. In a way, he used his command of the two off-speed pitches he threw to set up heater’s later in the count, resulting in Lindor being tardy for strikes two and three.

Rodón might have been a last-minute inclusion to the All-Star Game after teammate Fried was unable to participate, but he more than deserved the chance to pitch in the game. Among qualified AL starters, Rodón ended the first half sixth in strikeout rate (28.2-percent) and eleventh in ERA (3.08), FIP (3.58), and fWAR (2.1). Alongside Fried, he has helped to stabilize a rotation that has been without Gerrit Cole, will be without Clarke Schmidt for the rest of the year, and is awaiting the returns of Luis Gil and Ryan Yarbrough from injury, and will be a huge piece in the postseason if he keeps pitching the way he did in the first half.

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