Rodón's injury a sore spot as Yankees settle for split

NEW YORK -- With wins becoming as valuable as air in the Bronx, the Yankees are depending on Carlos Rodón to return to form and bolster their unstable rotation more than ever. He left Sunday afternoon’s 9-7 loss to the Astros at Yankee Stadium in the third inning with left hamstring tightness, leaving more questions about the vitality of the rotation in his wake.

Rodón’s efforts to produce a bounce-back afternoon started off well, as he retired the top of the Astros’ lineup in order to begin the game. He ran into trouble in the second frame after walking two batters, giving up a three-run blast to Jake Meyers with two outs and giving back the one-run lead he was gifted by a Gleyber Torres solo homer.

In the third inning, he let up a two-run blast to Yordan Alvarez on an 0-2 slider on the corner, allowing the Astros to take a 5-1 lead. Then, in the middle of his two-out at-bat against Chas McCormick, Rodón was seen moving gingerly before returning to the mound.

“I just felt it grab for a second -- it felt like a cramp,” Rodón said after the loss.

After a long discussion with manager Aaron Boone and the team’s trainers, as well as two warmup pitches, Rodón exited the game with the coaching staff. He tossed just 2 2/3 innings, allowing five runs on three hits (two homers), while striking out five and walking two batters, with his season ERA rising to 7.33.

“Honestly, after that it felt fine; it was kind of more a precautionary thing,” Rodón said. “In this moment, I feel normal. It’s one of those things that we’ll have to see what tomorrow holds.”

Rodón is planning on undergoing MRI testing, but he’s cautiously optimistic that he will be able to avoid a stint on the injured list. He was more concerned about the walks of Tucker and Jeremy Peña that preceded the home run to Meyers in the second inning.

“The walks definitely keep hurting me,” Rodón said. “[Against Tucker] we had a good bout going, and I just needed to finish him off. And then the walk to Peña, I just should have attacked him.”

The Yankees mounted an initial comeback in the bottom of the fourth inning, taking advantage of José Urquidy and Phil Maton’s control issues to tie the game at 5. They showed patience and battled through long at-bats after Harrison Bader singled in a run to make it 5-2: Anthony Volpe worked a hit-by-pitch, while Jake Bauers and Aaron Judge both drew walks, all with the bases loaded.

Jhony Brito tossed 1 2/3 scoreless innings in relief after coming in for Rodón. He was relieved by Wandy Peralta, who stranded two of his runners in the fifth by striking out Alvarez and getting Kyle Tucker to fly out to the warning track. Peralta’s issues came in the sixth, as he gave up back-to-back homers -- another three-run blast for Meyers and a solo homer for Martín Maldonado -- handing the Astros a 9-5 lead.

Peralta was tasked with getting through that inning and facing a stretch of right-handed bats due to the high usage of the bullpen over the past couple of days.

“[We were] just short,” said Boone. “It was going to be hard to get to the finish line, so I had to go with him there. I didn’t want to bring him in there that early, just being short in the ‘pen today.”

The Bronx Bombers threatened to crawl back in the late innings, getting runners in scoring position on multiple occasions. Torres, who notched three hits and reached base four times, came through with an RBI double in the sixth, his team-leading 48th RBI. In the eighth, Bader added another bases-loaded single to cut New York's deficit to 9-7.

However, outside of those two, the Yankees couldn’t deliver the clutch moment needed to get over the hump, going 3-for-12 with runners in scoring position and leaving a season-high 15 men on base.

In the ninth, Giancarlo Stanton came up with two runners on, representing the winning run, and hit a ball 392 feet to center field – right into the glove of Meyers on the warning track for the final out.

“At some point, we needed to get a big hit today,” Boone said. “I thought the at-bats were really good all day long. The strike zone control really got us back in the game. … You take seven runs and try to make that stand up. But we’re probably one big swing away from a double-digit day.”