GLENDALE, Ariz. — At this point, an abnormal approach to the season is a good thing for Carlos Rodon.
Two years ago, Rodon was injured before the season even started and didn’t make his first start until June. Last offseason, he was recovering from shoulder surgery at the end of the 2017 campaign and again didn’t make his first start until June.
Being injured had become his new normal.
So this time was different. It was weird. And that’s good.
“It felt like a normal year, but it actually didn’t really feel like a normal year because a normal year for me was going through an injury,” Rodon said Friday at Camelback Ranch. “It was great. I had a good offseason. Got to be healthy and finally show up here healthy and have a healthy spring. So I’m excited.”
“It's fun to see Carlos out there now,” general manager Rick Hahn said Wednesday. “He looks free and easy. … He looks very comfortable. He's coming in here just like any other pitcher. He's not rehabbing, you can tell that the psychological burden of being hurt or recovering is gone. I think he's ready to take that next step in his career now.”
A full, healthy season will be mighty important for Rodon, which seems like an obvious statement but remains true as the White Sox, fans and observers continue to try to figure out how he fits into the team’s long-term puzzle.
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At times during his shortened 2018, he looked like an ace. In nine July and August starts, he went 5-0 with a 1.84 ERA. He gave up just 13 runs over that two-month stretch. But September was a completely different story. Rodon went 0-5 with a 9.22 ERA in six starts. You could chalk it up to the end of a grind that featured a pair of significant arm injuries, shoulder surgery and the work to get back on the mound — and then more than 120 innings over four months.
Rodon isn’t going to do that, though.
“I’m never going to blame it on being tired or any of that stuff,” he said. “It was, for lack of a better term, two horseshit starts. That’s pretty much it.”
He’s referring, specifically, to his final two outings of the season, when he gave up six runs on nine hits in 2.1 innings to the Cubs and then eight runs on six hits and four walks in one inning to the Minnesota Twins. Those two starts alone ballooned his ERA from 3.22 to 4.18.
And so the questions still remain. We know what Rodon can do when he’s on, and it is a beautiful sight for White Sox fans. But can he do it consistently over the course of a full, injury-free season? That’s what 2019 will be about for him.
Because the future isn’t crystal clear like it is for some of the other young pitchers on this team, mostly because he got a head start. This will be Rodon’s fifth big league season, and his rookie contract is up after the 2021 campaign. While the White Sox hope the transition from rebuilding mode to contending mode happens before then, Rodon doesn’t align perfectly with the other starting pitchers of the future: the Michael Kopechs, the Dylan Ceases, the Reynaldo Lopezes and the rest.
So the coming together of that rotation quickly is important, especially if 2020 really is the year this group becomes a contending one. Rodon thinks the rotation could be a strong point of the team as soon as this season.
“I believe it,” he said. “We have great arms. I think this could be a real good team and hopefully we surprise some people this year.
“You have to understand we were a fairly young team last year. What did we lose 100 games? You can’t say it’s to be expected, but with the experience we have, it’s tough to contend. I never liked losing, but it’s something that we definitely learned from last year and hopefully this year we can use those lessons and put them into effect and have a better year.
“Experience in this game, it’s pretty big.”
It remains to be seen how that experience will pay off for the White Sox group of starting pitchers, how it will pay off for Rodon, specifically. But he’s already got one thing going for him: This abnormal run-up to the season. Hopefully this is what becomes the new normal.
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