TAMPA — Carlos Rodón made 33 starts last season, tied for the most in the Majors and enjoyed his best year in pinstripes.
And yet the pleasure at the end of it may have been subjective to someone who couldn’t bend his arm to perform simple tasks like buttoning his shirt, all while trying to get through some of the biggest games of the season.
“It was fun, let’s put it that way,” Rodón said with a chuckle on Saturday. “It was fun to challenge myself every day to pitch.”
Rodón’s range of motion was severely limited due to loose bodies in his left elbow, which he eventually had removed via surgery in October that also included shaving off a bone spur.
The procedure was a long time coming – Rodón said the elbow problems progressed slowly over three to four years – and will put him on the injured list to start this season, with the hope he can return by May at the latest.
“Just now [doing] Normal things were interesting,” Rodón said of his compromised state. “Did it hurt? Sometimes, sure, pitching. But I’d rather go out and compete. And I threw well, so I couldn’t just say, ‘Oh, I can’t throw.’ It was manageable.
“The reason I did that [the surgery] is the speed and things kind of took a step back. It just wasn’t who I normally was – I was useful, but it wasn’t the normal version of me. That’s why I wanted to make sure this would be resolved.”
Despite being physically limited, Rodón still pitched a 3.09 ERA while striking out 203 in a career-high 195 ¹/₃ innings.
He then made a quality start against the Red Sox in the AL wild-card series before being mobbed by the Blue Jays in Game 3 of the ALDS, although that was the case for almost every Yankees pitcher in that series.
Rodón acknowledged Saturday that he controlled 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 and competed,” he said. “That’s it. I got what I got and I was going to use it.”
It was plenty good enough on most nights as the $162 million pitcher got his money’s worth.
But he did so with the peace of mind of the medical staff that he did not risk making matters worse by going through it, with surgery being the likely end result anyway.
“If I think I can throw at 80 percent and help the team win and I can do that, then I’m going to do that because that’s what I was brought here to do: compete and try to win baseball games for the New York Yankees, but also for 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 thing was I knew I had more, but when your body betrays you, it’s an interesting battle. It’s an interesting dynamic in your mind that goes through that.”
The Yankees hope Rodón’s velocity — his four-seam fastball averaged 94.1 mph in 2025, up from 95.4 in 2024 — will start to return now that he has regained range of motion in the arm after surgery.
But he’s also still working on inputting his command with the extra range of motion he’s not used to.
“Hopefully this is something that will give him a little more freedom as he continues to build,” manager Aaron Boone said. “It can add to his stuff because he has a higher range of motion.”
As for when he might appear on a big league mound again?
Boone said earlier this week that he was “not far behind,” although Rodón put on the brakes a bit, not wanting to promise an early return.
He has received two PRP injections as part of the rehab process – the first after feeling like his arm had been “run over by a bus” and the second about 10 days ago – and threw his fifth bullpen session on Saturday.
“The volume has to be up,” Rodón said. “The velo[city] was good today, so just more volume, more pitches.
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