Erik Boland: How can Yankees' rotation get any better? Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon are on the way
Yankees' Cam Schlittler hops on the mound after finishing the eighth inning against the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Thursday in Boston, Mass. Credit: Getty Images/Winslow Townson
HOUSTON — The Yankees left spring training a month ago quietly confident that their rotation would be among the best in the game.
If possible, it has been even better than those lofty expectations.
Scarier still, at least from the opposition standpoint, with the real possibility of it getting better in the coming weeks.
That’s because Gerrit Cole, the 2023 AL Cy Young Award winner who missed last season after Tommy John surgery in March 2025, officially began a rehab assignment Thursday with High-A Hudson Valley.
Lefthander Carlos Rodon, who in October had surgery to remove loose bodies in his elbow and to shave down a bone spur, began a rehab assignment, also with Hudson Valley on Friday night. Rodon allowed a hit, one walk and struck out four in 4 1/3 scoreless innings.
Aaron Boone has said he expects Rodon, on a pitch count in the mid-60s (he threw 65), to be back a bit sooner than Cole, who threw 52 pitches on Thursday.
But both should be back within a month.
“Command was surprisingly good, generally he was pretty sharp,” one rival AL scout in attendance Thursday said of Cole, whose fastball sat 94-95 mph and peaked multiple times at 96. “If he looks like this in three weeks or whatever [in the majors], he’ll be just fine.”
And that’s where it gets potentially scary for opposing teams the final four months of the regular season and, one assumes if the AL East-leading Yankees continue on the track they are, into the postseason.
Because the rotation as is has been more than fine.
Going into Friday night’s game against the Astros, one started by righthander Will Warren, Yankees starters peppered the majors’ leaderboard in most categories of import.
The unit brought an MLB-best 2.59 ERA into Friday, striking out 149 over 146 innings comprising 25 starts. Yankees starters, who have allowed three earned runs or fewer in 22 of their 25 starts, entered Friday having thrown at least eight innings in an MLB-leading four games (the Marlins and Dodgers are the only other teams with multiple eight-inning starts, with two each). The Yankees have thrown at least seven innings an MLB-best seven times.
“I can’t say I’m surprised at any of their individual success, but to have put it together as well as they have to this point …” Boone said Friday afternoon, not completing the thought. “Again, we’re still very early in the season, though, so we’ve got a long ways to go. We’ve got to keep going out there.”
That Max Fried has gone out there in his six starts and gone 3-1 with a 2.40 ERA isn’t a surprise. Nor is it that a healthy Ryan Weathers, who returned to the team Friday after departing last-minute earlier in the week on paternity leave and who is scheduled to start here Saturday night, is 1-2 but with a 3.18 ERA. Cam Schlittler bolting from the gate looking like an AL Cy Young Award candidate at 3-1 with a 1.77 ERA, might be surprising to some.
But Schlittler’s come-from-nowhere dominance last season after his July call-up — and it was there where the organization collectively was surprised, pleasantly — was among the biggest reasons internally the Yankees felt they could mitigate the early-season absences of Cole and Rodon. They believed the 25-year-old Schlittler had this kind of potential.
Warren, who led the AL in starts last season with 33, entered Friday looking the part of consistent middle-of-the-rotation big-league starter in a way he did not last season when he went 9-8 with a 4.44 ERA. The 26-year-old righty was 2-0, 2.49 entering Friday, pitching his way, to this point, out of the conversation for which starters will go to the bullpen when Rodon and Cole return. The intent from the start of the season was for Weathers, almost regardless of how he pitched, to eventually be bullpen-bound, with Luis Gil and Warren fighting it out to stay in the rotation. Gil, who started the season as the fifth starter, rebounded Tuesday night in Boston from a rough first couple of outings when he threw 6 1/3 scoreless innings in a 4-0 victory over the Red Sox.
The rotation, going into Friday, had allowed just two runs (one earned) in its previous 29 2/3 innings.
What has impressed Boone the most from the group so far?
“They’ve done a really nice job of giving us length when they’ve been at their best,” the manager said.
The case, with rare exceptions, pretty much nightly.
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.
