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Shortly after Carlos Rodón’s disastrous debut season with the Yankees concluded, the pitcher tried to get his mind off of baseball for a bit.
Rodón’s family coincidentally has a place near Kansas City, where the Yankees ended their season. He and his wife like to hunt there, but Rodón wanted some alone time before heading home to Indiana to begin his offseason routine.
Fast forward a few months, and the Yankees seem happy with the work Rodón has been putting in since that getaway ended. Aaron Boone said he saw the pitcher just before the Winter Meetings in early December, and that Rodón “looked great.”
“I think he’s off to a really good start the first half of the winter here,” Boone said. “Making sure that his workout regimen, his throwing program and his buildup are all air-tight and making sure he’s in the best position so when he gets into spring training, he’s coming in with a great foundation.”
The Yankees signed Rodón to a six-year, $162 million contract roughly a year ago, but injuries and poor performances ravaged his first year in pinstripes. A left forearm strain derailed his spring training, while a back issue further delayed his debut until July. A hamstring strain the following month ultimately limited Rodón to 14 total starts.
They weren’t pretty.
After two straight All-Star selections with the White Sox and Giants, Rodón looked like one of the worst starters in baseball last year, recording a 6.85 ERA. On top of that, the fiery pitcher’s emotions got the best of him on multiple occasions, as he blew a kiss to heckling fans over the summer before turning his back on pitching coach Matt Blake in his final appearance of the season.
That game, which took place in Kansas City, saw Rodón allow eight earned runs without recording an out. It served as a fitting end to his campaign.
“Obviously, last year did not go the way he wanted or any of us wanted it to,” Boone said. “Again, you never want that to happen. But at the same time, it can also be one of those sobering reminders of how difficult and challenging this game can be and how important, obviously, health is. But hopefully it’s one of those things that just refocuses you that much more to make sure you’re in a great position.”
While Rodón and Blake were not on the same page in Kansas City – the pitcher apologized for his actions – the coach is also pleased with the southpaw’s offseason thus far.
Blake told the Daily News that Rodón’s free agency sweepstakes limited the amount of time he and the Yankees had to get on the same page last offseason. This year, there’s more time for that before spring training.
“We’re much more ahead of that this year in terms of what the routine looks like, what he needs from us and the expectations,” Blake said. “So there’s a lot more dialogue and just awareness for where we’re both at as we enter this part of the offseason.”
Blake added that he wasn’t too concerned about Rodón’s diminished velocity over his last two starts. Rodón and the Yankees have said that he ended the year healthy.
“I know he’s frustrated about the year,” Brian Cashman said at the GM Meetings in November. “Obviously, him getting out of the gate the way he did with the [forearm] injury, at least our belief system on this issue – we’ve unpacked a lot – is that he ultimately never got online the way he and we would have hoped. This winter, leaving us healthy, being in a better position now, understanding what he’s walking through in New York – not that that caused any of these issues – I’m looking forward to him and others coming back being closer to what we expected than what we got.”
At the end of the season, Rodón said that refining his movements on the mound would be a priority this offseason and in spring training.
Of course, Yankees fans won’t care about Rodón’s offseason if it doesn’t produce in-season results. The team gave him an average annual salary of $27 million with the expectation that he would be the Robin to Gerrit Cole’s Batman.
Cole fulfilled his end of the bargain, winning the first Cy Young of his career in 2023. But Rodón put together a season that left the Yankees with no choice but to insist better days are ahead.
“I don’t think there’s anything that’s stopping him from being the dominant version of Carlos Rodón,” Blake said, referring to a pitcher who went 27-13 with a 2.67 ERA and 422 strikeouts over 310.2 innings from 2021-2022.
Added Boone: “The best thing I can say about Carlos is he’s got a lot of ability, and that hasn’t gone away. It’s just making sure he’s in the best position to get it out. That’s what we’re all on board with helping him do.”
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Gary Phillips
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