TAMPA — Carlos Rodón does not understand it.
But as he continues his buildup from elbow surgery and experiments with a newfound range of motion in his left arm, he is finding that his velocity is ticking up when he stops trying to throw as hard.
Such was the case Saturday during his second live batting practice session of the spring, as he increased his workload to two innings and 27 pitches.
“I backed off and threw harder,” Rodón said. “I was like, ‘OK, that makes no sense.’ But it made it easier to command. It’s just little ins and outs of pitching, trying to find the stroke again, knowing how much effort in this pitch and the line of this pitch. It takes a little time.”
Rodón said he got up to 95 mph in the live session on a backfield, but was mainly sitting 93-94 mph.
The Yankees are hoping that one of the benefits of the surgery, which shaved down a bone spur and removed loose bodies in his left elbow, will be an uptick in velocity after Rodón lost some last season while pitching through it.
His four-seam fastball averaged 94.1 mph in 2025 — still effective enough to put together his best year as a Yankee but down from 95.6 mph in 2024 and the lowest it had been since 2020.
While Rodón still has plenty of buildup to go before he could join the Yankees in late April or early May, there is some curiosity as to where he ends up velocity-wise once he is pitching in real games.
“I’m just trying to tick up a little [before] I get there so I can close the gap of a big discrepancy in velocity,” Rodón said. “So just slowly building to get the velocity up so when I get in a game, it’s a lot more natural than just going from 90 mph to 98 mph. We’ll see what it does.”
Of course, the increased velocity would be of little use if Rodón cannot properly command it, which remains a work in progress that he hopes to straighten out the more he faces hitters.
But he should have a chance to do that every five days now as his buildup kicks into gear.
“Excited where he’s at,” manager Aaron Boone said. “He’s really probably not that far behind. He’s responded well to everything. We haven’t rushed anything with him. There were a lot of bullpens in there as he was kind of working through the kinks and stuff like that before we got him to lives. But he’s trending in a good way.”
Jake Bird, fighting for a bullpen spot, came into Saturday’s game with one out and a man on first in the sixth inning and promptly walked the first batter he faced on four pitches. But he rebounded to get out of the jam and toss 1 ¹/₃ scoreless innings. … Ben Rice delivered a left-on-left ground-rule double against Phillies reliever Kyle Backhus.
The Yankees made another round of cuts Saturday morning, reassigning RHP Michael Arias, LHP Kyle Carr, RHP Dylan Coleman and RHP Dom Hamel to minor league camp.