Major League Baseball

In Carlos Rodón, the Yankees have signed MLB's best left-handed pitcher

Updated Dec. 16, 2022 6:23 p.m. ET

Following the mega-deals handed out to Jacob deGrom and Justin Verlander, the last available bona fide ace of the free agent market has finally come off the board as left-hander Carlos Rodón has agreed to a six-year, $162 million contract with the New York Yankees.

While Rodón may lack the hardware and lengthy track record of excellence that deGrom and Verlander boast, he has a strong case for another title that should help to explain why he was able to command such a gargantuan contract: He's the best southpaw starter in baseball. Put another way: if you needed to win a game tomorrow, which lefty would you give the ball to?

For the entirety of the 2010s, this question wasn’t much of a debate: it was Clayton Kershaw, and then everyone else, even alongside the tremendous careers of guys like David Price, Cole Hamels and Chris Sale. Kershaw’s 59.3 fWAR from 2010-2019 was best not just among lefties but all pitchers, and comfortably ahead of the next-best lefty, Sale at 44.5.

To be fair, you could still make a case for Kershaw even as he enters his age-35 season. The stats may not be quite as eye-popping as they were during his prime, but plenty of reasonable fans would happily still give the future Hall of Famer the ball in this hypothetical must-win situation.

However, if we accept that Kershaw’s reign as the game’s best left-hander is indeed behind us, Rodón emerges as an awfully convincing heir to the throne. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of other talented southpaws worthy of similar consideration — they just didn’t get to be free agents during the biggest winter spending spree in MLB history.

Atlanta’s Max Fried is coming off a second-place Cy Young finish in 2022. As far as pure run prevention goes over the last few seasons, Julio Urias has few, if any left-handed peers. If you catch them on the right day, guys like Robbie Ray, Blake Snell and Shane McClanahan are more than capable of looking like the best lefty in the game. Quality Start King Framber Valdez just showed the national audience how awesome he can be on the October stage. Nasty Nestor Cortes is one of two lefty starters alongside Urias with a lower ERA than Rodón over the last two seasons. Others like Sale and Hyun-Jin Ryu have also looked elite in the recent past, but are returning from significant injuries and are difficult to evaluate moving forward.

The point is: There are some damn good lefties out there, and if we did this exercise a year ago, Rodón would have a much shakier claim. But with another year of excellence under his belt, his case has been bolstered significantly. Thirty-nine left-handed pitchers have thrown at least 200 innings over the last two seasons. Here’s where Rodón ranks among them:

10.5 bWAR (1st)
11.1 fWAR (1st)
2.67 ERA (3rd)
156 ERA+ (2nd)
0.998 WHIP (4th)
2.42 FIP (1st)
4.80 K/BB (2nd)
12.2 K/9 (1st)
33.9% K-rate (1st)
.567 OPS allowed (1st)
.196 BAA (1st)

Now it starts to look a little more convincing.

If there’s one knock on Rodón, it’s an iffy track record of durability. His pitch counts do tend to climb early in starts, and in turn he hasn’t chewed up innings quite to the same degree as some of the other premier aces across the game. Even as he is coming off a career-high 31 starts and 175 innings pitched with no injury trouble, that brings his innings total over the last two years to 310.2, which ranks 42nd among all starting pitchers and 11th among lefties.

Granted, the league as a whole has moved away in recent years from expecting starting pitchers to go anywhere near as deep into games as they used to, so it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether certain pitchers aren’t equipped to go deep into games or if their teams simply aren’t letting them. No matter the reason in Rodón’s case, he’s averaged less than six innings per start over the past two seasons, which doesn’t track quite as well with the traditional understanding of a frontline starter.

Still, on a per-inning basis over the last two seasons, it’s hard to argue against Rodón as the most statistically dominant left-hander in the game — which is why he is celebrating the $162 million due to him.

Almost fourteen years ago exactly, CC Sabathia — definitive owner of the Best Lefty crown before Kershaw’s rise — signed a seven-year, $161 million deal with the Yankees, then the largest free-agent contract ever given to a pitcher. Since then, seven free-agent pitchers — including Rodón — have signed for more total dollars. Here’s where Rodon’s deal slots in among the largest starting pitcher free-agent contracts since Sabathia, and in turn, in MLB history:

Gerrit Cole entering age-29 season (2020): 9 years/$324M ($36M AAV) with Yankees
Stephen Strasburg entering age-3 season (2020): 7 years/$245M ($35M AAV) with Nationals
David Price entering age-30 season (2016): 7 years/$217M ($31M AAV) with Red Sox
Max Scherzer entering age-30 season (2015): 7 years/$210M ($30M AAV) with Nationals
Carlos Rodón entering age-30 season (2023): 7 years/$200M (AAV) with Yankees
Zack Greinke entering age 32-season (2016): 6 years/$206.5M ($34.4M AAV) with Diamondbacks
Jacob deGrom entering age-35 season (2023): 5 years/$185M ($37M) with Rangers
CC Sabathia entering age-28 season (2009): 7 years/$161M ($23M AAV) with Yankees
Jon Lester entering age-30 season (2015): 6 years/$155M ($25.8M AAV) with Cubs
Patrick Corbin entering age-29 season (2019): 6 years/$140M ($23.3M AAV) with Nationals

In addition to the obvious Sabathia parallels with regard to landing spot and contract size, Price’s deal seven years ago also stands out as a strong comparison for Rodón’s new deal. While they both ultimately arrived at significant paydays entering their age-30 seasons, Price and Rodón took very different journeys to get there, albeit ones that started in a similar place: dominating college baseball. In Price’s case, it was three years of excellence at Vanderbilt (3.22 ERA in 313 IP with 441 strikeouts) that led to him being selected No. 1 overall in the 2007 draft by Tampa Bay.

Seven years later, Rodón was selected third overall by the White Sox in the 2014 draft after three tremendous seasons at North Carolina State (2.24 ERA in 345.2 IP with 436 strikeouts). Both reached the majors the year after being drafted, but their paths diverged quickly from there. Price immediately established himself as one of the best lefties in the game and never had any trips to the IL, winning the AL Cy Young Award in his fifth season and making five All-Star games before reaching free agency. Rodón, on the other hand, struggled to find consistency in his first few seasons and then battled various injuries — his fifth season featured Tommy John surgery rather than any high-profile awards. It wasn’t until after he returned from surgery that Rodón rediscovered his ace form from his college days.

Fortunately, with free agency, timing is everything, as Rodón got healthy and peaked at the perfect time entering the open market. He now begins the next chapter of his career as the latest prominent Yankees addition in their determined pursuit for a 28th World Series championship. And like with Sabathia 14 years ago, the Yankees can feel that much more confident in their commitment knowing they might just have the best lefty in the game.

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Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He has covered baseball for his entire adult life, most notably for MLB.com, DAZN and The Ringer. He's a Mariners fan living in the Eastern Time Zone, which means he loves a good 10 p.m. first pitch. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.