Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jake Mintz and senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman react to the New York Yankees series victory over the Baltimore Orioles and highlight the pitching from Carlos Rodon. Hear the full conversation on the “Baseball Bar-B-Cast” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
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Video Transcript
Yankees taking 3 out of 4 over the Orioles in Camden this weekend.
I was there for 3 of these games Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Fred was great in the Thursday game.
Trevor Rogers in the one game the Orioles win, brilliant again, I think Trevor Rogers needs to get Cy Young votes.
The AL Cy Young race is interesting.
I was thinking about this this weekend too.
Is he going to get votes?
The argument is that this is one of the greatest run prevention seasons of the last 100 years for like a minimum of 15 starts in 100 innings.
The argument against is that there are other awesome candidates who have thrown 90 more innings than him.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a couple fifth place, but I don’t think it’s a certainty.
What he is doing has been historic, but we’ll see, cause it’s obviously a small sample.
Game 3 of this series, Rodan was awesome.
Carlos going 7 innings, allowing just 1 earned run late in that one.
I wrote about Rodan today at Yahoo.
How he has been forced to evolve as a pitcher.
In 2021 and 2022, Rodan was bullying people, right?
He was overpowering with his fastball, and then he would use his slider as a swing and miss outside the zone.
When the league catches up to him and velocity becomes more commonplace, and his fastball takes a step back due to some injuries in 23 in his first year with the Yankees, he can’t just do that anymore.
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He can’t bully people.
And so in 24 and coming into 25, he had to learn how to evolve, and so far he has done that.
He has mixed in a whole bunch of new pitches.
He is throwing his changeup 16% of the time now.
He’s throwing a sinker that he learned a week before the season started 10% of the time, and he looks like a legitimate playoff number 2.
I talked to him yesterday.
He just seems to have a better understanding of himself and how he would get out.
He told me, you know, looking back on the Dodgers outing in the World Series, he, with his current capabilities would pitch that game differently.
And I think that is something that is encouraging as the Yankees head into October.