This story was written before Vladimir Guerrero Jr. went deep in his first play of ALDS Game 3 from Carlos Rodón.
That’s because Rodón has faced Guerrero 21 times in their respective careers, and exactly zero Of those times ended with a strikeout. Guerrero has 10 hits, four walks and a .588/.667/.941 line against the Lefty Yankees, with just four swing-and-misses among the 78 pitches he’s seen. It’s been pretty tough getting to two-strike counts in this game, really, with only 19% of pitches coming in a two-strike count, compared to Rodón’s 31% rate this season.
While most of that damage came at Rogers Center, where 15 of those plate appearances took place, it’s at least worth noting that the two faced each other in six appearances at Yankee Stadium, and Guerrero reached all six times — two walks and four hits, including a home run.
Rodón is the only pitcher Guerrero has faced more than 16 times without an out. Guerrero is the only battery Rodón has faced at least 15 times without a strikeout. This is unusual for both sides.
This, more than the Wild Slash lineage, is the most interesting part here. You don’t hit .588 against a pitcher without a little batted ball luck, and it’s no different here. Guerrero’s expected batting average against Rodón is .392, which is both a) great and b) not .588. Sometimes you break a bat on a 65 mph Blooper right and hit a double.
But not hitting it once, well, it’s hard to “good luck” your way.
Now, Pitcher-vs-Batter statistics are rarely predictive, we have to take great pains to explain. Indeed, it’s almost impossible for a pitcher to see a single hitter enough times to approach anything meaningful, and in the rare cases that do happen, it usually takes so many years that the version of players you see today isn’t the same as what they were when they started. What happened is not what will happen, in other words.
That said, what happened was that one of the best lefties of his generation wasn’t able to get a single out against a power hitter who isn’t exactly allergic to Whiffing. While Guerrero manages a generally better-than-average strikeout rate, he has also revived at least 90 times in his five full seasons. It can be done, and others have done it; Lance Lynn, for example, had seven strikeouts in his 21 times against the young Guerrero.
SO: how did Rodón approach him – and why isn’t it working? Let’s lay out some facts to watch out for when these two meet in Game 3.
Vlad’s bat gets very, very fast against Rodón.
We don’t have metrics for “sees the ball come out of this pitcher’s hand well” – not yet, anyway. We’re going to try to get back into something here.
This season, Guerrero has seen at least 20 pitches from 25 different pitchers, including some of the best aces in the game, like Jacob DeGrom, Garrett Crocher and Cristopher Sánchez. His bat speed against them ranged from 73.5 mph on the low to 80.2 mph on the high, and while that can be influenced a bit by pitch speed, it can also mean that the hitter is more confident in what he’s getting, or that he’s doing a better job of swinging at pitches in the zone, as he’s opposed to a bucking outside, or a combination of all.
Of these 25 pitchers, look at the top three who saw the highest bat speed against Guerrero.
Now realize what he did against those three pitchers.
Seymour hasn’t hit Guerrero this year, and in fact hasn’t even managed a single swing-and-miss in five appearances.
Litttell, who faced Guerrero with the Rays and later as a member of the Reds, saw Guerrero in 12 appearances over the past three seasons. The results: zero strikeouts. One swing and miss.
Third fastest? Rodón, at 79 mph, and again: no strikeouts. Against those three, that’s 38 career appearances, a .500/.605/.800 line against, and zero strikeouts.
This all matters because it matters how fast the bat goes. When Guerrero gets his bat 79 mph or faster this season, including in the playoffs, he’s hit a monstrous .363 with a .708 slugging percentage. When he had his bat slower than that, it was a .289 average with a .412 slugging percentage.
This is not a foolproof method. Baltimore senior Kremer didn’t get fast swings, and Guerrero beat him pretty well over the years (1.328 OPS against). But even for a player known for one of the fastest bats in baseball, getting out of his A-swing seems to have a real effect. Whether it’s because of pitch shape or simply picking up the ball well, Guerrero takes off his best swings against Rodón.
Rodón usually gets whiffs to righties on his slider and changeup. But Vlad doesn’t pursue them.
Although he has long been known for his power fastball, Rodón’s two best swing-and-miss pitches to righties this year are his slider (38% factory rate in 2025) and changeup (35%). During his career against Guerrero, he threw 30 of those two types of pitches, inducing 13 swings, and exactly one inning – a bad tip on a somewhat hanging first-pitch slider in 2024. Not that it mattered – Guerrero ended up picking apart two runs on a hard brewer’s pitch in the middle of a fastball.
What’s happened here is that most of these pitches have not been in the zone – 40% have been – and Guerrero has refused to expand against them, swinging only twice at 18 opportunities against these pitches out of the zone. (One went foul, and a weak one flying to center.) That’s an 11% chase rate, and he’s a pitcher who typically gets a 33% chase rate by righties against those pitch types. Again: It looks like Guerrero sees it very well out of hand.
Watch: If Rodón decides to challenge himself again on the first throw.
Although Rodón is a bit less of a two-pass thrower than before — he’s mixing sinkers and changeups more than ever — he’s only started Guerrero with four sailors and a changeup this year. None were in the area. Guerrero offered to none. Good start.
This is a distinct change from previous years, when Rodón would start Guerrero with all sorts of things in and around the zone. What happened, then, was that Guerrero was up 1-0 each of the six times they faced each other this year. This is an advantageous spot to be in, which forces Rodón into the zone and ultimately allows Guerrero to be more selective about where he swings.
It makes sense to have changed an approach, because what Rodón was working with before wasn’t working. Then again, this new way didn’t really work either.
Rodón, it should again be said, is one of the best southpaws in the game. Just because he hasn’t had success against Guerrero yet doesn’t mean he can’t easily dominate him in Game 3, that’s important to remember. But until he did, he didn’t. A single takedown would be a very good place to start.
