Another free agent blunder for the Giants, though a massive win for New York. The New York Yankees have added Carlos Rodon, the Giants’ NL Cy Young nominee from last season, to bolster their starting pitching depth after last postseasons debacle against the Astros.
This move for Rodon was massive for the Yankees as they were looking at yet another year with a substandard bullpen of starting pitchers.
Yes, Gerrit Cole has been one of the better pitchers in baseball and has done a great job since he arrived in New York three years ago, but the Yankees have desperately lacked similarly talented starting pitchers for the games Cole hasn’t played in. It was one of the biggest factors as to why they were bounced by the Astros in the ALCS last season as their bullpen simply couldn’t compete with the Astros, even when Gerrit Cole was in the lineup.
But now they might just be able to.
Sure, Rodon is only one man and can only realistically be counted on for 30-34 games as a starter, but those 34-30 might very well be the difference between being the 1st seed in the entire MLB or just the division winner of the AL East.
With a stat line of 14 wins, 237 strikeouts, a 1.03 WHIP, and a 2.88 ERA, Rodon was one of the best pitchers in the NL as his pitching contributed to 17% of the Giants total win count, even though the team finished .500 with an 81-81 record.
Now, that may not seem like a great percentage, but when you see that the NL Cy Young winner was Marlins’ ace Sandy Alcantara with 14 wins (20% of the Marlins total win count), the impressiveness of the record becomes more evident. Rodon, like Alcantara, was a fantastic pitcher on below average team, but still managed to rack up All-Star level stats. That’s very impressive.
And the Yankees are hoping that he’ll be able to translate those stats in the American League as he’s going to face some tough competition in the Toronto Blue Jays, the Cleveland Guardians, and the reigning World Series champions, the Houston Astros.
We’ll see if Rodon is worth the 6-years, $162M the Yankees are paying him, though we definitely now know that Giants are going to need a new starting, Cy Young-caliber pitcher. And that is harder to find than what San Franscico is seemingly thinking by letting a 30-year pitcher in his prime walk away for such an affordable (by baseball standards) deal.
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