After a long, cold, and in many ways dismaying winter, Opening Day is finally here. The tabula rasa the day offers allows the team to let go of the could-have-beens of the last five months and fully focus on renewed hopes and goals.
The faces we will see this afternoon are already different from those we might have expected even a month ago, most notably the man standing on the mound for first pitch. Ace Gerrit Cole will miss the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery, but that is not an automatic death knell for the season nor indeed the Yankees’ chances in today’s game.
Carlos Rodón is a more than capable pitcher to inherit the responsibility of Opening Day starter, a role he has filled for the White Sox already in his career. When forming a game plan, he could start at his late-April win against Milwaukee when he allowed a run on two hits with eight strikeouts in six innings, a game in which his offense exploded for 15 runs.
He could face a new-look lineup today, so here are four keys against a Brewers team looking for its fourth division title in five years.
Establish four-seamer inside to righties
As much as Rodón evolved in 2024 to use the entirety of his arsenal, his success begins with the fastball. The pitch has lost a lot of its swing-and-miss capacity since joining the Yankees, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be a weapon. His slider has retained much of its capability to get hitters to chase and whiff, but you need a good heater to set up those scenarios.
Establishing the four-seamer on the inside edge to righties forces them to respect that half of the zone. This opens up ample chase and whiff opportunities as he targets back-foot sliders off a similar aiming point as the fastball. Planting the seed in the hitter’s mind that he can land his four-seamer for strikes inside means the hitter cannot eliminate pitches that start inside and they have to respect any pitch started on a similar trajectory.
Command bottom part of zone, don’t be afraid to trust infield defense
Milwaukee hitters collectively logged the third-highest ground ball rate in baseball in 2024 at 45.4 percent. The Yankees focused a lot of their efforts on the position player acquisition side on improving the defense — Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s move back to second and Paul Goldschmidt’s addition at first giving them a more sure-handed right side of the infield. The situation seems ripe for these two facts to combine to Rodón and the Yankees’ advantage. If Rodón can command the bottom edge of the zone, particularly with his off-speed pitches, the Yankees could make hay in the ground ball department against the Brewers.
Land sliders in zone vs. lefty-heavy lineup
The Brewers project to start five left-handed batters in this afternoon’s contest. As a unit, Brewers lefties logged the second-lowest pull rate in baseball in 2024. What’s more, as a team they recorded the highest called strike rate (18.4 percent), second-highest walk rate (9.7 percent) and second-lowest chase rate (28.9 percent) in the league. This paints a picture of a painfully patient team. Hitters are content to hunt a specific pitch, let the ball travel, and use the entire field, and are more than happy to take their walks if such a pitch does not come.
This creates a lane for Rodón to attack the corner low-and-away with sliders. It gives him a bit of leeway to not be so precise with the pitch — he just needs to focus on hitting a good spot in the zone glove-side. If he makes a mistake centrally, he doesn’t face as much danger of it being pulled over the short porch as perhaps against other teams. There are opportunities for him to steal called strikes early in the zone if the opposition isn’t interested in swinging at this pitch-location combination. It also gives him a chance to take advantage of all the room out in the left-center death valley — sliders moving away from a lefty are harder to hit to the opposite field with authority than say a fastball in a similar location and Jasson Domínguez could find himself quite busy in his first start of the year in his new left field position.
Channel emotions effectively
With all of the excitement of pitching in front of a home crowd on Opening Day, it is easy to get wrapped up in the emotion of the moment. We’ve seen Rodón become overly animated in the heat of a charged atmosphere, the southpaw practically going berserk after striking out the side in Game 2 of the 2024 ALDS against the Royals. He was unable to maintain that level of energy across the entire start, resulting in Kansas City scoring four runs in the fourth en route to leveling the series at a game a piece.
Rodón made a concerted effort to rein in his emotions for his next start, channeling the example set by Cole and inhabiting a “robot” mentality in his ALCS Game 1 start. That psychological preparation paid off, Rodón twirling six innings of one-run ball with nine strikeouts to set the ball rolling on the Yankees victory.
Baseball is a game and I would never ask a player to be emotionless on the field — its the human emotion that breathes life into the game. However, there is likely a healthy middle ground where Rodón can channel his excitement into sharpened focus without letting things spiral out of hand. This year’s offense is likely one that cannot afford to be placed into an early deficit and it is incumbent on Rodón to keep his team in the game across his start.
