Yankees give Carlos Rodon credit for lasting five innings after getting tattooed

TORONTO — Carlos Rodon took the loss Thursday night, but the slumping  lefthander also earned a save of sorts.

Despite being tattooed for eight runs in the first two innings by the Blue Jays — an outburst that included two three-run homers by George Springer — Rodon managed to make it through five innings of the Yankees' 9-2 loss.

While from the outside that may seem insignificant,  lasting five innings saved what has been a consistently taxed Yankees bullpen of late.

“I want it,” Rodon could be seen mouthing to Aaron Boone when, with two on and one out in the bottom of the fifth, the manager went out to the mound, apparently to change pitchers.

After a brief chat, Boone left without signaling to the bullpen, which was so sure a move would be made that righthander Phil Bickford had to high-tail it back through the fence after starting a sprint to the mound.

Rodon retired the next two batters — Alejandro Kirk on a pop-up and Ernie Clement on a groundout — to finish his five innings at 107 pitches.

Boone was able to stay away from the few remaining relievers he truly trusts in big spots, and it kept the Yankees from having to summon yet another arm from an already barren Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre roster when it comes to relief options. Bickford pitched 1 1/3 innings and Jake Cousins, brought up Thursday, threw the final 1 2/3 innings.

“I just wanted to get through five for the bullpen and just prove something to myself,” Rodon said. “That even though I get knocked down, I can get back up and just keep going.”

Said Boone: “To us, that’s a big deal, especially with what we’re going through. His teammates see that, I see that. I respect the way he went out and competed tonight when it didn’t go his way those first two innings. These are little things in the season that suck right now but also make me continue to feel really good about this group and where we’re going.”

Which isn’t to say there were a lot of positives for Rodon to take out of the game. Lasting five innings was about it.

Rodon saw his record fall to 9-5 and his ERA soar to 4.42 after allowing eight runs and 10 hits to the Blue Jays.

He was 9-2 with a 2.93 ERA in his first 14 starts, but in the last three, he has allowed 21 runs (20 earned), 28 hits and six walks in 13 2/3 innings

The commonality in all three outings has been the opposition — Boston, Atlanta and Toronto — clobbering Rodon’s high-90s fastball. Both of Springer’s homers came on belt-high 96-mph fastballs.

“Clearly, some teams’ game-planning are doing a good job against him,” Boone said. “While he’s wearing it right now and going through it, it’s also kind of a gutsy effort to not want out, to want to finish through five, especially with what we’re going through as a team right now.”

Rodon said the “stuff” is there when it comes to his fastball, which Thursday peaked at 98.1 mph and sat at just over 95.

“The command’s just not great right now,” he said of his fastball. “Some adjustments to be made this week. Just need to be better.”

After Thursday’s game, Blue Jays manager John Schneider didn’t hide his club’s approach, saying Toronto hitters “stayed on the fastball really well.”

Schneider added: “I just thought we had a really good plan. You could kind of see him adjust after the second inning with a couple more cutters and changeups, but we were on the heater pretty well.”

And now it’s up to Rodon to counter-adjust to the adjustments that have been made on him.

“They put some really good swings on some fastballs tonight that I didn’t execute,” he said. “It was not fun.”

Boone believes he will figure it out.

“Clearly we gotta execute better,” he said. “We gotta make better decisions about pitch selection in certain situations. We gotta get it right, and confident we will. It’s in there to fix this.”

Rodon allowed five runs in the first inning and three in the second Thursday, and one negative streak continued Friday night. The Yankees allowed the first run of the game for the ninth straight contest as the Blue Jays took a 1-0 lead in the first against Marcus Stroman. The Yankees gave up at least one run in the first inning of seven of the nine games.