NEW YORK — The Yankees walked into Wednesday night with a pitching staff held together by tape and hope.
They handed the ball to belonged to a rookie still trying to prove he belonged. Few among Yankees fans expected the night to turn on him.
Elmer Rodriguez, the Yankees’ top pitching prospect, had made four big-league starts this season and won none of them. He carried a 4.76 ERA and a reputation for nibbling instead of attacking. When forearm trouble sidelined Ryan Weathers, the Yankees recalled the 23-year-old right-hander out of necessity, another patch on a leaky rotation.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone, though, sounded like a man who saw something coming.
Asked before the game about the young pitcher’s ceiling, Boone did not hedge.
“He’s a young pitcher with a lot of ability,” Boone said after the 9-3 win. “He’s probably pitched his best baseball over the last month or so in Triple-A.”
Boone went further, framing Rodriguez as a long-term piece.
“He’s got weapons, he’s a future big-league starting pitcher without question, and he’s still very young, but he’s made a lot of progress this year,” Boone said. “His strike-throwing has gotten better, and hopefully we’re getting him now when he’s at his best during the year.”
The Yankees needed the night to go well for reasons bigger than one rookie. Boston sat just behind them in the wild-card race, and every loss tightened the math. A short start would have leaned hard on a Yankees bullpen already down a late-inning arm.
A rookie answers with best stuff of his life
By the time Rodriguez walked off the mound in the seventh inning, the doubt among Yankees fans had turned into a standing ovation.
The right-hander spun six innings of three-hit ball against the Houston Astros, struck out six, and carried the Yankees to a 9-3 win at Yankee Stadium, the deepest outing of his young career.
The story was velocity. Rodriguez pumped a sinker that sat near 97 mph and touched 99, filling a strike zone he had only flirted with in earlier trips to the majors. Every one of his five pitches ticked up from his last start.
Houston could do little with it. A first-inning run scored on a misplayed fly ball in center. Daulton Varsho homered in the fourth.
The Yankees offense handled the rest. Cody Bellinger cleared the bases with a go-ahead double, Luis García Jr. homered and drove in two, and Ben Rice launched his team-leading 35th homer in a four-run seventh. Paul Blackburn earned the win in relief. Bennett Sousa took the loss for Houston.
Rodriguez did not factor in the decision. He did not need to.
‘He was nasty’
Boone has watched Rodriguez fight to trust his arm all season, and Wednesday he saw the opposite.
“He was nasty,” Boone said. “That’s what we get excited about right there. I think he got their attention right away. You’re seeing 97, 98, 99 [mph] sinkers filling up the zone, spinning a good breaking ball. Man, that was really encouraging to see that.”
For Rodriguez, the night was about conviction as much as stuff.
“It was just trusting myself,” Rodriguez said. “It’s something that I’ve been building up since my first couple of starts, and so each time I’ve felt better. I’ve been working on some stuff down there [in the Minors], and I feel like it’s been working so far.”
The velocity, he said, was built over months.
“Just working hard,” Rodriguez said. “There’s some stuff I’ve been working on behind the scenes. I’ve been trying to get some weight and just working on continuing to finish the year strong. I’ve been feeling better.”
Rodriguez, who pitched for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic, said the roar of 40,269 matched that stage.
The number nobody circled before Wednesday
One number explains the difference.
Rodriguez’s sinker averaged 97.2 mph, roughly 2 mph above his season norm and a clear tick harder than his June outing. That extra life let him live in the zone instead of picking at its edges, the exact flaw the Yankees staff had flagged.
His minor league work hinted it was coming. At Triple-A Scranton, Rodriguez went 8-3 with a 2.59 ERA over 19 starts, striking out 99 batters in 97 1/3 innings. The strikeouts always traveled north. Wednesday, the command did too.
Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake had diagnosed the problem hours earlier.
“It seems like when he has struggled up here, he’s just kind of flirting with the strike zone more than living in it,” Blake said. “For him to be successful at this level, it’s not giving the hitters too much credit.”
A crowded rotation clouds his next move
The timing cuts against him. Max Fried is due back from a bruised left elbow this weekend. Weathers is weeks away, and reliever Fernando Cruz is pitching through a partial elbow ligament tear.
Rodriguez’s start bought him no guarantees. A healthy Fried nudges someone out, and the Yankees have not said the rookie has secured a rotation spot.
Still, he changed the conversation. A Yankees club that recalled him to cover a hole must now ask whether the hole was ever his to fill.
“That’s by far the best stuff he’s had since he’s been up here with us,” Boone said.
Rodriguez is not lobbying for Yankees reassurance.
“I know I can go out there and compete,” Rodriguez said. “I know I have the stuff to do that.”
The Yankees sat 75-57 entering Thursday, 3 1/2 games behind the Rays in the AL East and holding the top wild card, 2 1/2 games clear of the Red Sox. Boston visits the Bronx to face the Yankees this weekend. Fried’s return is near. And a rookie who was supposed to be a Yankees placeholder has forced a decision the club never planned to make.
What do you think? Leave your comment below.
Yankees are in big trouble, going nowhere. The Red Sox will catch them soon!!!