Carlos Rodon spent most of last season pitching with a bone spur in his left elbow.
After a lengthy recovery following offseason surgery, the left-hander was eager to make his way back into the Yankees’ rotation fully healthy once again.
That chance finally came on Sunday afternoon in Milwaukee.
Rodon showed some positives signs, but was ultimately hurt by struggles with command, as he allowed three runs on two hits and five walks over 4.1 innings of work.
He issued a free pass to the leadoff man in all but two of those innings.
“That was the bugaboo,” Aaron Boone said. “Overall his stuff was good — fastball ticked up being here, I thought he had a really good changeup and some solid sliders to get swing-and-misses, but the three leadoff walks hurt.”
Rodon was able to dance his way around it in both the first and second innings, but Milwaukee finally made him pay in the bottom of the fourth.
After two walks and a hit-by-pitch loaded the bases, the Brewers got on the board with a sacrifice fly then took the lead with their first hit of the day, a two-out two-run single.
“He just lost the zone there,” Boone said. “It’s a really good job getting out of the first two innings, walking the leadoff batter usually isn’t a recipe for success — a couple more they come back to haunt him a bit.”
The skipper pointed towards rust as a potential source of some of the left-hander’s struggles finding the zone, but Rodon didn’t have any sort of explanation himself.
Rodon was trying to adjust on the fly over the course of the outing, but simply could not get himself into a groove.
He’ll look to turn thing around in his next outing, opening this year’s Subway Series.
“It’s frustrating,” Rodon said. “Obviously I need to be better in that aspect of just attacking the zone and getting ahead in the count quick, just some stuff to work on for the next time out.”
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