Alexander Wilson
Wednesday afternoon at Steinbrenner Field, 377 days after going under the knife for Tommy John surgery, Gerrit Cole threw a baseball in a game that counted for something. Ten pitches. One scoreless inning. Seven strikes. And a fastball that averaged 97.1 mph and peaked at 98.7.
The New York Yankees have been patiently managing their rotation all spring, relying on a combination of steady veterans and volatile upside while waiting for their star arms to return. Wednesday was the first real signal that the wait is going to be worth it.
Cole was honest after the outing. “It was not great today. Not objectively,” he said on the YES Network broadcast. “It has been really good recently but probably today was the worst it’s been. So it was serviceable for the most part, but I would say it was another level of intensity out there. The velocity creeped up.”
That last line is the one worth holding onto. The velocity crept up, on 10 pitches, against live hitters, in his first game action since the 2024 World Series. Cole’s four-seamer averaged 96.7 mph during his 2023 AL Cy Young campaign. He is already sitting above that, and he was not even pushing it. Aaron Boone was measured but clearly encouraged. “I thought he looked good,” the manager said. “He looked strong, poised. All of a sudden, you’ve got a fast runner, you’ve got to control the running game and you’re trying to make pitches for the first time in that setting. I thought he handled it well.”
The Yankees anticipate Cole returning to the major league rotation in late May or early June. That is six or seven weeks away. Given how the velocity is tracking, it is not hard to imagine him arriving sharper than anyone expected.
Rodon Is Following a Similar Script
While Cole was working through his spring debut, Carlos Rodon was doing something equally important in the background: throwing with more range of motion than he has had in years. Rodon had a bone chip removed from his throwing elbow after the 2025 season, and the early returns on his rehab have been quietly remarkable. He is not expected to pitch in a Grapefruit League game before the end of spring, but he has already advanced to facing live hitters in simulated settings, and the arm is responding.
The velocity is building back deliberately, and as Rodon noted earlier this spring, the command has felt better when he backs off the effort. That counterintuitive discovery is a sign that his arm is moving freely again, not compensating. He is targeting an April return, which would give the Bombers both Cole and Rodon in the rotation somewhere between mid-April and early June. When both are healthy and right, the Yanks’ rotation stops being a concern and starts being a genuine competitive advantage.
What the Opening Day Staff Actually Looks Like
Until that happens, New York is running a rotation that requires a lot of things to go right simultaneously. Max Fried is the foundation and there is no reason to think he will not be excellent again. He went 19-5 with a 3.09 ERA last season over 195.1 innings, the most of his career, and has looked sharp all spring. He is the kind of starter who makes everyone around him better simply by taking the ball every fifth day and giving you a chance to win.
Cam Schlittler has been encouraging in fits and starts. The 26-year-old had a brief back and lat scare in mid-February that delayed his spring debut, but he has since settled in and shown the same swing-and-miss arsenal that made him a key piece of the postseason rotation a year ago. His ceiling in this rotation is real.
Will Warren has been the steadiest arm in camp. Over 16.1 spring innings, he owned a 1.65 ERA and averaged just 1.1 walks per nine, which is the kind of command-first profile that keeps a team in games when the lineup is working. He is not going to overpower anyone, but he does not need to.
Luis Gil is the wild card, and has been all spring. His 2.38 ERA through four outings looked decent. Then the Tigers lit him up for nine hits and seven earned runs in three innings. The fastball command is the entire equation with Gil. When it is there, he is as dangerous as anyone in this rotation. When it is not, he is unplayable. The Yankees are going to live with that volatility through the first month and hope the good version shows up more often than the bad one.
Ryan Weathers rounds out the five, a bounce-back candidate with a live arm and an injury history that requires careful management. He is the X-factor of the group.
The Bigger Picture
Beyond the five, the Yanks have genuine depth that most contenders would envy. Carlos Lagrange is hanging around MLB camp with a 0.66 spring ERA and a 103 mph fastball that has the entire organization buzzing. Elmer Rodriguez is developing in Triple-A as another safety valve. Ryan Yarbrough has made a quiet case for himself as a spot-start option all spring.
The honest assessment of this rotation right now is that it is functional but fragile. Fried is elite, Schlittler has elite upside, Warren provides stability, and Gil and Weathers introduce real uncertainty. That is a group capable of winning a lot of games in April and May. It is not a group built to sustain a full season without reinforcements.
But reinforcements are coming. Cole is throwing 97 mph in his first outing back. Rodon is building toward an April return with more arm freedom than he has had in years. The window between now and when both of them arrive in the Bronx is the only real test this rotation has to pass. Based on Wednesday’s outing, Cole is going to make that window as short as possible.
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