Carlos Rodon outpitches Jose Quintana as Yankees beat Mets for Subway Series split

Jose Quintana and Carlos Rodon were teammates for three seasons on the White Sox, starting in 2015. But as both took the mound Wednesday in the second game of the Subway Series, their widely differing careers found another parallel.

Both missed the first half of the season due to injury. Both have looked sometimes uneven in their return. And both have been emblematic of their teams’ woes: significant promise going into the season, heavy spending that meant the Mets and Yankees had the highest payrolls in the sport, injuries and disappointments, and efforts at a turn around that might be too little, too late.

So, it made sense that their performances were also emblematic of each team’s current reality: Rodon was good enough, and Quintana was not quite enough to compensate for his offense’s lack of production, as the Yankees turned aside the Mets, 3-1 at the Stadium to earn the series split.

Rodon allowed one run on four hits with three walks and five strikeouts and a hit batsman over 5 2/3 innings. The Mets, meanwhile, went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position and stranded seven men on base.

As a result, the Mets fall further out of contention with the Aug. 1 trade deadline looming, while the Yankees hold on to dwindling hope in this war of attrition disguised as a baseball season.

The Yankees threatened repeatedly against a scuffling Quintana in the first and second inning, but again proved victim of their own poor situational hitting – plating just two runs. They had runners at the corners with no outs in the first, before Quintana struck out Giancarlo Stanton and got Anthony Rizzo to ground into a double play.

They loaded the bases with no outs in the second, before Kyle Higashioka struck out to bring up Oswald Peraza, who grounded into a run-scoring fielder’s choice (all the runners were safe). Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s sacrifice fly made it 2-0, but Gleyber Torres skied out to right to end the threat.

The Mets got one back in the third, after Francisco Alvarez led off with a single and Danny Mendick doubled. Brandon Nimmo’s sacrifice fly scored Alvarez, but Rodon worked around a two-out walk to strand runners on first and second.

The Yankees made it 3-1 in the fourth, when Harrison Bader singled and moved to second when Mark Vientos threw the ball away from third. Bader scored on Anthony Volpe’s single.

Aptly, while Rodon had the better night, neither team did much to prove they could put together any sort of consistent stretch run – pivotal as Billy Eppler and Brian Cashman approach the trade deadline.

“I know it’s an arduous time for the front office and working through so many different scenarios,” Aaron Boone said before the game, also admitting what everyone knows – that these next few games could “potentially” decide whether the Yankees make any sort of significant push to acquire talent at the deadline. “Sometimes, there are messages sent. But let’s see what happens and go from there.”

Rodon and Quintana took turns being messy and dominant, swinging the pendulum from inning to inning – as much a product of their own rust as it was that of two offenses that have failed to consistently click this season.

Quintana allowed three runs, two earned, on six hits, with three walks and five strikeouts. Despite walking the tightrope, he managed to extend some impressive streaks; he has the longest homerless active streak for a pitcher – not allowing a long ball for 72 2/3 straight innings, which, due to his first-half absence, dates to Aug. 4, 2022. He’s also now allowed two earned runs or fewer in his last 16 starts.

Then there was Rodon, who had some redemption to earn, and mostly did – getting an ovation as he left in the sixth.

Rodon went into the game 0-3 with a 7.36 ERA. A recent faux pas – blowing a kiss to heckling Yankee fans in Los Angeles – also raised some hackles on social media and beyond. Wednesday, he showed fire in the other direction – yelling “Give me the (expletive) ball during a dominant first inning where he struck out two.

“I do believe his stuff is there,” Boone said before the game. As for all the rest – what is, what will be, and what could have been – well, that’s above a manager’s paygrade.

“A lot of stuff is out of my control right now and, in some ways, out of the team’s control,” Boone said.

Both the Yankees and Mets have had to struggle for months to make that true, and now, it might be too late to take back the reins.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.