Carlos Rodón made his long-awaited season debut for the New York Yankees on Sunday, and while his fastball looked as electric as ever, his command told a different story. The left-hander, returning from a seven-month recovery after elbow surgery, flashed the kind of velocity that made him a two-time All-Star—touching 97.7 mph and averaging 95.7 mph, up from 94.1 mph last season. But for all the heat, Rodón struggled to find the strike zone, walking five batters and hitting another before exiting with one out in the fifth inning of a 4-3 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers.

For the first 3⅔ innings, Rodón was untouchable, holding the Brewers hitless and striking out four. But control proved to be his undoing. Of his 78 pitches, only 42 were strikes, and the command issues came to a head in the fourth inning. After walking William Contreras and Gary Sánchez and hitting Andrew Vaughn to load the bases, Rodón allowed a sacrifice fly and a two-out, two-run single to Blake Perkins, who entered the game batting just .122 on the season.

“Velo’s great, but when I’m not commanding the zone, it really doesn’t matter how hard I’m throwing—when you’re spraying it,” Rodón said after the game. It was a frank assessment from a pitcher who knows what it takes to dominate at the highest level.

Rodón’s return to the mound was his first major league action since undergoing surgery on October 15 to remove loose bodies from his left elbow and shave a bone spur. His season debut was further delayed by tightness in his left hamstring in late March. Coming off a stellar 2025 campaign where he went 18-9 with a 3.09 ERA and earned his third All-Star nod, the 33-year-old is still searching for the rhythm that made him one of the game's most feared arms.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone saw plenty to build on, praising Rodón’s fastball, changeup, and slider for generating swing-and-miss stuff. But Boone acknowledged the “bugaboo” of walks that cost his starter. “I thought overall his stuff was good,” Boone said. “His fastball ticked up… but we need to tighten that command.”

For Rodón, it was a step forward in a long recovery—just not the clean one he was hoping for. “It was fun being back out there,” he said. And for Yankees fans, that alone is a promising sign of what’s to come.