Carlos Rodón said his elbow pain affected his daily life so completely that he “couldn’t really bend my arm. I couldn’t button a shirt. I couldn’t scratch my face. I couldn’t take a drink of water. ... I could definitely never comb my hair.” Seven months after elbow surgery, the 33-year-old New York Yankees left-hander is set to return to a major league mound Sunday at the Milwaukee Brewers, with the club’s pitching machine once again ready to put his arm back into circulation.
Who Carries the Cost
Rodón is 93-72 with a 3.73 ERA in 11 major league seasons, including 37-26 since signing a $162 million, six-year contract with the Yankees in December 2023. He was 18-9 with a 3.09 ERA last season despite an ailing arm. The numbers sit there like a ledger of labor and damage: the contract, the wins, the innings, and the pain that kept building underneath the performance.
His four-seam fastball velocity averaged 95.3 mph in his first season with the Yankees, 94.4 mph in the first half last year and 93.8 mph in the second half. In his Division Series start against Toronto, his fastball velocity dropped to 93.4 mph, and he allowed six runs and lasted just 2 1/3 innings. The decline was measured in miles per hour and innings, the kind of accounting the sport loves while the body absorbs the consequences.
Rodón said his elbow deterioration occurred over three-to-four years. He said, “Did it hurt? Sometimes sure, pitching, but I’d rather go out there and compete. I was throwing well, so I couldn’t just say, ‘Oh, I can’t pitch,’ but it was manageable.” That is the bargain the apparatus sells: keep competing, keep throwing, keep going until the damage becomes impossible to ignore.
What the Club Calls Recovery
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, “He was great last year. So, just had to do it a different way. He didn’t have the range of motion.” Boone also said, “But I think if you talk to major league pitchers, especially ones that have done it for a while, you’re kind of always dealing with different stuff. So credit to him for being able to navigate it last year and with excellence.” Pitching coach Matt Blake said, “They were mending to him every day to get him to post.”
That phrase, “mending to him every day,” says plenty about the routine pressure built into the system. The club needed him to post, and the daily work around his arm was part of making that happen. The language is soft; the demand is not.
Rodón had surgery Oct. 15 to remove loose bodies in his left elbow and shave a bone spur, then had a setback in late March when he felt tightness in his right hamstring while throwing at the Yankees’ Florida complex. As part of his rehabilitation, he had a pair of platelet-rich plasma injections. He said, “The first one was early. I really remember it because it was vivid because my arm felt like it got ran over by a bus.”
Back to the Mound
Rodón reported to spring training in the mid-to-upper 250-pound range, about 10 pounds above his target, and said, “I guess a happy offseason. I enjoy food.” He made three starts during a minor league injury rehabilitation assignment that started April 24 and had a 3.38 ERA and 16 strikeouts while allowing three walks and three homers in 16 innings. He threw 83 pitches in his last outing and will have a limit of about the same against the Brewers.
Rodón said, “Not as daunting as Tommy John’s surgery. You never want to go under the knife, for sure, but it’s good to be at the end of the road.” Blake said, “You can see there’s just a little more freedom of motion in the arm action. It looks a little easier. It’s not as much body creating the power.” Rodón said, “I’m happy with the recovery. So just keep going.”
The return is framed as a comeback, but the facts around it are all about management of damage: surgery, setbacks, injections, pitch limits, and a body that had to be coaxed back into service. The Yankees’ investment, the mound, and the schedule all wait for the same thing — the arm to hold together long enough to keep the machine moving.