If things have gone wrong for Carlos Rodón so many times in his career, the people around him have seen it coming. At first it collapses and glows. Then he barks in frustration. He starts to miss his location. He turns his back on a coach or kicks a bat in the dugout. He’s starting out as one of the most electric pitchers in the game; he ends up exhausted, his threads broken.

So in some ways it was strange that on Monday, when he lasted just 3⅔ innings for the New York Yankees in a 4-2 win over the Kansas City Royals that tied the American League Division Series at one game apiece, he didn’t was undone. .

“I thought I was pretty much under control,” the 31-year-old left-hander said afterwards in his locker in a quiet clubhouse.

For better or worse, Monday just came down to pitching.

He had worked in the days leading up to Game 2 to channel his emotions into fuel, knowing that the 48,034 screaming fans filling Yankee Stadium would give him plenty of energy. Before the game, he tried to take it all in as they cheered for him.

And at first he gave them plenty to cheer about. He threw 12 pitches in the first inning, 10 of which were for strikes. He stuck out his tongue, grinned and roared as he charged down the hill. He took a liner off his glove in the third and received an ovation as he waved goodbye to the trainers. He overpowered the Royals by three. His speed increased more than a mile with each sacrifice.

The Yankees took a 1-0 lead in the third after a walk for Gleyber Torres and singles by Austin Wells and Giancarlo Stanton. Then maybe Rodón started to think about it. Up next was Salvador Pérez, who hit .462 with three home runs in 27 at bats against Rodón.

“The way I had good success against him, he also had a lot of strikeouts against me,” Pérez said before the game. “I think we’re 50/50.”

Fifty-fifty for a hitter is, of course, a Hall of Fame number. Pérez had seen one pitch in his first at-bat: a fastball he hit to third base. Rodón wanted to see how he would handle this meeting. Pérez delivered a few sliders near his ankles. Rodón decided to throw another one. He left it in the middle of the plate.

“I wanted to be in the zone, or I wanted to be near the zone,” he says. “And I mean, he made a great swing and crushed that ball.”

The next batter, Yuli Gurriel, singled on a 2-2 slider low in the zone and took second on a slider that bounced off the plate. But Rodón did not fall apart. He struckout Michael Massey and tied the score at 1-2 off Tommy Pham. Then Rodón threw a slider that didn’t slide, and Pham hit it to his right to drive in another run.

“They hit some pitches that were good, and some pitches that weren’t so good,” Rodón said. ‘That 1-2 slider should have been buried. I should have been better with that.”

Pham stole second place. Here Rodón started to slump his shoulders a bit, slam his left hand into his glove, squeeze the baseball as if he were trying to extract juice. But he took a deep breath and retired Hunter Renfroe, going up 1-2 against the No. 9 hitter, Garrett Hampson, who had singled to take center stage his first time. Rodón threw two four-seaters well above the zone.

“I probably tried to do too much with a couple of fastballs, and they came up and sprayed out of the zone, so uncompetitive,” he muses.

But his final slider was fine, below the zone. Hampson lined a shot to left, and because third baseman Jazz Chisholm is a natural middle infielder playing only his 47th game at the position, he was in the wrong spot to cut the ball. Pham scored; Hampson came second.

Manager Aaron Boone trudged to the mound to take the ball from Rodón, who had thrown 39 pitches in the first three innings and — somehow, gradually and then suddenly, 33 in the fourth alone. Rodón strode off the field and shook his head to himself.

“Everything went pretty well,” he says. “And it was just one of those things where – not that I lost focus, but I should have just stayed aggressive and gone at it.”

He added: “I feel like there were times when I was too good, and I could have been more aggressive with some things, and I could have been better, but I’ll learn from it (when) I go through the match . – which I have done a thousand times and will continue to do for the rest of the night.

Perhaps it will be a relief to discover that for once the answer is simply: pitch better.