Carlos Rodón Heads to the Big Apple

Though it was reported that an agreement was reached a week ago, the Yankees have officially signed Carlos Rodón to a six-year, $162 million contract. The 30-year-old southpaw has revitalized his career the past two seasons after struggling with his control and injuries since his debut in 2015. He has morphed into one of the best pitchers in baseball, but will a move to Yankee Stadium impact his performance? Let’s consult the park factors.

Now this is a park factor mix I love to see! I think the knee-jerk reaction would be that Rodón is departing a seriously pitcher friendly park and arriving in a hitter’s haven. That’s not the case. However, the shape of his performance might change, and that’s these park factors help us to determine how.

Beginning with the non-home run hit type factors, we find that it’s a clean sweep for Yankee Stadium. The most important factor, though, is singles, as that’s the most frequent hit type. Yankee is neutral, while Oracle slightly increased singles. That’s a minor difference. Throughout Rodón’s career, his BABIP has been all over the map, falling as low as .242 back in 2018, but rising as high as .330 back in 2016. His career mark stands at .295, which is right around the league average. It’s no surprise, as his career batted ball distribution is close to league average as well, with perhaps a slightly lower GB% and higher FB%. He has actually become an extreme fly ball pitcher the last couple of years though, so his career BABIP isn’t really relevant.

Since he doesn’t allow a high rate of grounders, the doubles factors are actually important here. Yankee sports a much bigger gap in doubles factor than it did in singles factor. Perhaps this saves him a couple of doubles over the course of a season, which could knock off some runs from his ERA. Finally, there’s an even bigger gap in favor of Yankee for triples. Of course, these don’t occur very often, so maybe he gives up one less triple over a season. Overall, these factors suggest his BABIP projection should be marginally reduced.

Moving to home run factors, we find an unsurprising pair. Yankee’s home run factor ranked in a tie for seventh best park to hit a home run. On the other hand, even with the renovations done prior to the 2020 season, Oracle still remains the toughest park in baseball to hit a home run. So this is one of the bigger park impacts you’ll see on a metric. Rodón has done a great job keeping his fly balls in the park over the last two seasons, and sports a career average well below the league since his 2015 debut. He’s even done that spending the majority of his time in a home run friendly park with the White Sox. But while Yankee Stadium might not result in a dramatic HR/FB rate spike, his HR/FB rate forecast absolutely has to increase.

The strikeout and walk factors are fairly close, with the strikeout factors both sitting neutral. Yankee slightly inflated walks, while Oracle suppressed them. After posting a double digit walk rate over the majority of his career through 2019, the light bulb suddenly turned on, and he has posted marks hovering around just 7% during the last two seasons. Whether his early career poor control will ever read its ugly head again is a better question than whether his new park will impact his walk rate.

Let’s now get to the batted ball type factors. Yankee suppressed grounders and increased flies, which merely accentuates the type of pitcher he has become. On the positive side, it also suppresses line drives, versus a neutral Oracle, and increases pop-ups more meaningfully than Oracle. Both help explain why Yankee is a better park for pitcher BABIP.

We now get to the summary factors, FIP and Basic (I chose 3 year, as it corresponds to when Oracle Park was renovated). Interestingly, there’s a bigger gap between the FIP factors than Basic. Also interestingly is that Yankee is only marginally a hitter friendly park, while Oracle is only marginally pitcher friendly. I would have guessed both park would have rated more dramatically on each side.

So we have a clear direction of what this park switch should trigger in Rodón’s projections. Solely due to the park switch, his BABIP forecast should decrease, while his HR/FB rate should increase. Since the HR/FB rate change looks a bit more significant than the change in BABIP, it likely results in higher ratio projections. So I would expect his fantasy value to take a small hit as a result of the signing.