Erik Boland: Yankees' Carlos Rodon can't wait to be back on mound Sunday
Yankees pitcher Carlos Rodon during spring training at George M. Steinbrenner Field on Feb. 17, 2026, in Tampa, Fla. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
MILWAUKEE — After throwing to hitters for the first time during his rehab process from offseason elbow surgery, Carlos Rodon smiled as he discussed the 20-pitch live batting practice session on March 9.
“I needed to do something else,” the lefthander said at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. “It was getting monotonous throwing with nobody standing in.”
Like pretty much every pitcher who must rehab for an extended period, Rodon, who underwent surgery last October to remove loose bodies in his throwing elbow and to shave down a bone spur, had long since tired of the tedious nature of rehab.
That first live BP begat more such sessions — with a slow but steady increase in pitches thrown in them — and, eventually, rehab starts in the minor leagues at the start of this season.
Finally, after three of those, an antsy Rodon is set for the biggest step of all: returning to the Yankees' rotation. He'll do that Sunday afternoon against the Brewers at American Family Field.
“Just looking forward to getting back to work,” Rodon said before Saturday night’s game.
Rodon, coming off a 2025 season in which he went 18-9 with a 3.09 ERA and tied for the American League lead in starts with teammate Will Warren (33), rejoins a rotation that has been among baseball’s best. That's the case even without Rodon and Gerrit Cole, who missed all of last season while recovering from Tommy John surgery, currently is on a rehab assignment and is due back within the next three weeks.
“They’ve been impeccable,” Rodon said of the rotation. “All of them have really thrown the ball great.”
Despite Max Fried’s rough outing in Friday night’s loss and Luis Gil’s struggles before getting demoted — and subsequently put on the injured list with right shoulder inflammation — the Yankees' rotation entered Saturday night ranked first in the majors in WAR (4.9), second in ERA (3.09) and fourth in innings (215 1/3).
“Obviously, the performances they’ve put out through the first month or so have been really great,” Rodon said.
He has had a front-row seat for plenty of those performances and has been a regular in the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium since the season started, other than when he’s traveled to his minor-league rehab starts (the other two came with Double-A Somerset and High-A Hudson Valley).
But watching and contributing are worlds apart, and Rodon has had his share of watching in his career. Players who spend lengthy stints on the IL often talk about the daily drudgery involved in it, especially in the early going, when the days are almost entirely about conditioning.
“It’s very mundane, it’s monotonous. Every day’s fairly much like Groundhog Day,” said Rodon, who was cleared to begin playing catch about eight weeks after last October’s procedure.
That kind of monotony was nothing new for Rodon. He missed significant time in 2018 after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his shoulder in 2017 and missed most of 2019 and part of 2020 after undergoing Tommy John surgery.
“This is what we do,” Rodon said during a conversation in spring training, referring to being sidelined for a prolonged stretch. “And you miss it every day you’re not doing it.”
Manager Aaron Boone can relate.
Playing in a pickup basketball game in January 2004, Boone — then a Yankees player with the memory of his 2003 ALCS Game 7 homer off Tim Wakefield still fresh in his and the club’s minds — tore the ACL in his left knee.
It wiped out his 2004 season (in addition to causing his contract with the Yankees to get voided and, with the franchise suddenly needing a third baseman, paving the way for Alex Rodriguez’s trade to the Bronx).
“Excited for him,” Boone said of Rodon’s return. “He would have preferred being here, I think, even a little earlier. But feel like he’s had a good couple of months . . . He’s ready to go and [we’re] excited to get him back in the rotation.”
Rodon threw 83 pitches in his final rehab start, last Tuesday with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre against Worcester. His pitch count on Sunday, Rodon assumes, will be in the same neighborhood.
Not that he’ll be counting. Not after yet another long rehab process to get back, as he put it, “to work.”
“I’m sure I’ll be on some sort of pitch count,” he said with a smile. “But I’m not even going to ask. I’m just going to go until they take me out.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
