TAMPA – Carlos Rodon was still walking off the field after throwing the equivalent of two innings to Yankees hitters Thursday when someone popped out of the dugout with questions galore.

"How did you feel?" an eager Gerrit Cole asked him. "Did you like the curve?"

The answer to the first question was "good." The answer to the second was "better." No one can relate to the zig-zagging process that is a return from elbow surgery quite like Cole, who is navigating his own version of that process these days, too. He knew Rodon didn’t like the way the curve felt in one of his two previous live sessions, but he also knew that it would probably feel better next time. It had for him.

"[I felt] physically fine. I’m just working to get a feel for things," Rodon told SNY afterward. "Obviously, I would like everything to be crisp, but it’s hard to do that when you have to build up and come back from surgery. It’s coming. Trying not to get frustrated with myself."

Rodon was scheduled for 35 pitches Thursday. He threw them against Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt, Spencer Jones, and Zack Short. He threw them to catcher Ben Rice, with whom he was in constant conversation between pitches, seeking feedback from his catcher and the screens Yankees coaches had behind the mound. The surgery he underwent in October removed loose bodies and a bone spur that limited his range of motion last season. But with increased range of motion comes more possibilities for variation around his arm action and release point, which means his spring training has been as much about building stamina as rebuilding his sense of where his arm needs to be and how best to get it there repeatedly.

"My arm moves a lot more, so it’s just understanding that leash I have, how far I’m going," Rodon said. "I just need to throw more, so I build the proprioception, build the feel of that."

The 33-year-old will not travel with the Yankees when they head to Arizona for next week’s spring-ending exhibition games. Instead, he said he will stay in Tampa to continue his progression – a progression Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he hopes will lead to a return in April.

"It feels like a normal progression. It’s just refining every day. Every day I play catch is taking in a lot of information," Rodon said. "It’s not like, drastically different. But building a new feel."

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