NEW YORK — The best pitcher on the Yankees this month may not start a game in the first round. That is not a demotion for Carlos Rodon. It might be the smartest card the club has left to play.
A short series bends the usual rules. Five starters become three. The math leaves a proven arm without an obvious inning, and a manager searching for the best place to use it.
For most of the year, the answer would have been simple. Now it is anything but.
The Yankees are weighing a role change for a pitcher who just delivered one of the finest starts of his career, and the reasoning cuts to the heart of how they attack October.
Why a three-man rotation created a fourth-starter problem
The wild-card format is the root of it. A best-of-three needs only three starters, not the five a team carries all season.
The Yankees have their trio. Cam Schlittler, the American League’s likely Cy Young Award winner, headlines it. Max Fried and Gerrit Cole fill the other two slots.
That leaves Rodon on the outside of the rotation despite pitching like a front-line arm. The left-hander is 7-3 with a 2.67 ERA over 16 starts, and he owns a 1.89 ERA across his last seven outings. Few teams have a fourth option this good.
So the Yankees face a rare kind of surplus. The question is not whether Rodon belongs on the roster. It is how to squeeze his best work into a series that may not hand him a start.
Boone opens the door to a bullpen role
Manager Aaron Boone acknowledged that Rodon could work out of the bullpen in the wild-card round, an unusual assignment for a starter coming off eight scoreless innings.
The comment signals how a best-of-three format has scrambled the Yankees’ pitching plans, with three rotation spots and four starters worthy of them. New York hosts the Red Sox in the series, all games at Yankee Stadium, with the winner advancing to face the Rays.
Boone did not commit to anything, but he did not close any doors either. Speaking to reporters, he treated a relief role for Rodon as a live option rather than a last resort.
Using Rodon out of the bullpen “is a consideration” for the wild-card round, Boone said.
He went further, making clear the left-hander had earned a central place in the plan whatever the role. Boone framed it as recognition, not consolation.
Rodon is “very much in the conversation, deservedly so,” Boone said via Bob Nightengale.
The phrasing matters. A manager does not describe a bullpen assignment that way unless he sees real value in it, which suggests the Yankees view Rodon as a weapon they intend to deploy early and often.
The hidden factor pointing past the wild-card round
There is a layer that few are weighing, and one that may decide everything. The choice is not only about the Red Sox. It is about the Rays waiting in the division series.
Rodon just shut down that exact lineup. In his final tuneup, he blanked Tampa Bay over eight innings in a 2-0 win, striking out eight while reaching his 100th career victory and 1,500th career strikeout in the same night. That is the profile of a pitcher a team wants aimed at a specific opponent.
It creates a genuine tension. Use Rodon in relief against Boston to win the round, or hold him back to start against the Rays if the Yankees advance. One plan prioritizes the game in front of them. The other protects a matchup edge a week away.
A bullpen role threads that needle. It keeps Rodon available in high-leverage spots against the Red Sox while preserving the chance to start him in the next round, a flexibility a traditional assignment would not offer.
Where the decision leaves the Yankees
The Yankees enter the postseason at 92-67 as the top American League wild card, hosting a Boston club they beat in seven of 13 meetings this season. Aaron Judge remains sidelined by a calf strain, which raises the stakes on every pitching call.
Rodon’s flexibility becomes more valuable against that backdrop. If the offense is thinner without Judge, run prevention carries more weight, and a fourth arm capable of multiple innings is exactly the kind of insurance a short series rewards.
There is risk in the plan. Rodon has started all year, and asking a rhythm pitcher to warm up on short notice is not the same as handing him the ball in the first inning. The Yankees would be betting his stuff travels to a new role.
For now, the decision remains open, with the wild-card series set to begin next week at Yankee Stadium. Boone has not named his Game 1 starter, let alone his bullpen order. What he has done is put his hottest pitcher squarely in play for a job nobody expected him to hold.
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