TAMPA — Carlos Rodón made 33 starts last season, tied for the most in the majors, and enjoyed his best year in pinstripes.
And yet, by the end of it, the enjoyment may have been subjective for someone who couldn’t bend his arm to do simple tasks like buttoning his shirt, all while trying to gut through some of the biggest games of the season.
“It was fun, let’s just put it that way,” Rodón said with a chuckle Saturday. “It was fun every day to challenge myself to go pitch.”
Rodón’s range of motion was greatly limited because of loose bodies in his left elbow, which he eventually had removed via surgery in October that also included shaving down a bone spur.
The procedure was a long time coming — Rodón said the elbow issues were a slow progression over three to four years — and will land him on the injured list to start this season, with the hope that he can return by May at the latest.
“Just [doing] normal things were interesting,” Rodón said of his compromised state. “Now did it hurt? Sometimes, sure, pitching. But I’d rather go out there and compete. And I was throwing well, so I couldn’t just say, ‘Oh, I can’t pitch.’ It was manageable.
“The reason I did [the surgery] is the velocity and things were kind of taking a step back. It was just not who I normally — I was serviceable, but it wasn’t the normal version of me. So I wanted to make sure we got this fixed.”
Despite being limited physically, Rodón still pitched to a 3.09 ERA while striking 203 out across a career-high 195 ¹/₃ innings.
He then turned in a quality start against the Red Sox in the AL wild-card series before getting roughed up by the Blue Jays in Game 3 of the ALDS, though that was the case for almost every Yankees pitcher that series.
Rodón acknowledged Saturday that he was managing the elbow “probably every start,” but it became part of who he was.
“I adapted to what the arm gave me and we just went out there and competed,” he said. “That was it. I got what I got and I was going to go use it.”
It was plenty good enough on most nights as the $162 million pitcher earned his money.
But he did so with the peace of mind from the medical staff that he was not at risk of making things worse by pitching through it, with surgery the likely end result regardless.
“If I think I can pitch at 80 percent and help the team win and I can do that, I’m going to do that, because that’s what I was brought here to do, was to compete and try to win baseball games for the New York Yankees but also my teammates,” Rodón said. “That’s why I kept going. I was winning games, we were winning games and that’s what was important.
“The frustrating part was I knew I had more, but when your body’s betraying you, it’s an interesting battle. It’s an interesting dynamic in your head going through that.”
The Yankees are hoping that Rodón’s velocity — his four-seam fastball averaged 94.1 mph in 2025, compared to 95.4 in 2024 — will begin to return now that he has his range of motion back in the arm after surgery.
But he is also still working on dialing in his command with the extra range of motion that he is not used to.
“Hopefully this is something that as he continues to build, it just frees him up a little bit more,” manager Aaron Boone said. “It can add to his stuff, having that next level of range of motion.”
As for when he might get back on a big league mound?
Boone said earlier this week that he was “not far behind,” though Rodón pumped the brakes a bit, not wanting to overpromise an early return.
He has received two PRP injections as part of the rehab process — the first after feeling like his arm “got ran over by a bus” and the second about 10 days ago — and threw his fifth bullpen session Saturday.
“The volume has got to pick up,” Rodón said. “The velo[city] was good today, so just more volume, more pitches.”