LOS ANGELES — The Giants-Dodgers rivalry is just baseball to Carlos Rodón. Of course there’s history, and of course he knows it, but his job is to just take the mound and pitch.
“Just go out there and play,” Rodón told reporters postgame.
On Tuesday, it was the Dodgers’ job to prevent Rodón from doing that well and for very long. Los Angeles didn’t succeed particularly well in those grossly oversimplified objectives, but still came out with a 3-1 victory.
Rodón is no longer undefeated in a Giants uniform. His first loss of the season came almost exclusively because of his second inning in which he said he “sucked.”
That’s a harsh assessment. Most pitchers would take two runs in an inning and otherwise zeroes. It is, by definition, a quality start. But great pitchers often hold themselves to such standards.
Entering the Dodgers tilt, Rodón’s greatness has met any possible standard.
Tuesday night’s second inning that tarnished Rodón’s near-perfect résumé started innocently enough, with Will Smith grounding out. But then Rodón walked Max Muncy, a fearsome slugger but in a lefty-against-lefty matchup. Rodón bounced back to strike out Justin Turner, but then walked Cody Bellinger, another left-handed hitter.
“Those are two guys I need to get,” Rodón said.
In general, Rodón’s command wasn’t razor sharp. He threw 60 of his 95 pitches for strikes. And one of his most costly misses came right after putting Bellinger on.
Bellinger and Muncy advanced on a slider that slipped out of Rodón’s hand and to the Dodger Stadium backstop. The wild pitch put two runners in scoring position with two outs for Chris Taylor, LA’s eighth hitter.
Rodón got ahead of Taylor with a low-and-inside heater and a perfectly placed slider. Taylor took an uncompetitive 0-2 pitch up and away to make it 1-2. That’s when he smacked a belt-high fastball the other way to score both Muncy and Bellinger.
“Chris Taylor’s a pretty good hitter, man,” Rodón said.
Rodón is right. Taylor is a pretty good hitter. He’s had two 20-home run seasons since 2017 and hasn’t had an OPS below .775 in that stretch. The Dodgers are likely the only batting order in baseball he’d hit in the bottom of.
The reason why Taylor hits in the eight-hole is simple: the Dodgers lineup is stacked. Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Bellinger have won Most Valuable Player awards. Trea Turner probably went in the top-10 of your fantasy baseball draft. Max Muncy and Justin Turner are multi-time All-Stars. Will Smith is one of the best hitting catchers in the National League. There are no easy outs.
“It was fun,” Rodón said of facing the Dodgers’ lineup. “They don’t strike out very much. They put the ball in play. Just tried to attack.”
Rodón struck out a season-low three hitters. He earned just two whiffs on his four-seam fastball, uncharacteristically low for the pitch that was worth the most runs in the sport last year, per Baseball Savant.
But Rodón allowed only two runs on three hits and two walks. Both walks and one of the hits came in the second inning he needed a game-high 27 pitches to navigate through.
He escaped further damage later in the game with mistake pitches that resulted in warning track flyouts. Muncy, Bellinger and Smith each had loud outs with a combined distance of 1,084 feet. Muncy’s in particular died just short of the wall in right field after traveling 390 feet, and the Rodón fastball he clobbered caught way too much of the plate.
But those are outs just the same in the box score. By keeping LA in the ballpark, even just by inches, Rodón kept the Giants in the game.
Even though there’s an L next to Rodón’s name in the box score, and an imperfect win-loss record on his profile, the way he bounced battled after the second inning can be taken as a win.