Carlos Rodon has been on the injured list since June 30 with left elbow inflammation, but the Yankees starting pitcher is returning to the mound on Saturday with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

The left-hander will throw close to 50 pitches in what will be his first rehab start since the injury, manager Aaron Boone told reporters before New York's series opener against the Atlanta Braves on Friday night.

From there, the Yankees will decide how they want to continue with Rodon's rehab assignment. One option, with New York sporting a solid five-man staff at the moment, is to recall Rodon but have him piggyback off one of the starting pitchers' starts. The other option is to let him make another start in the minors. Either way, once Rodon returns to the big league club, Boone confirmed that he will piggyback as he continues to raise his pitch count.

"I think he’s close to 50, not quite 50 pitches tomorrow, and I think we’ll definitely, probably piggyback him at some point," Boone said. "It’s just do we have him do one more and then do the piggyback at whatever pitch count he’s at. That’s the most likely right now."

New York's remaining regular season schedule allows them the flexibility to ease Rodon back in as it doesn't have any more long stretches of games with no days off.

"We're coming up on a stretch where we've got a fair amount of off days now, really the rest of the way," Boone said. "We don't have those long stretches of games, so hopefully that's beneficial for us."

When healthy, Rodon was excellent this season. In nine starts, the left-hander is 4-2 with a 3.30 ERA and 52 strikeouts in 46.1 innings. However, he missed the first two months of the season while recovering from left elbow surgery in the offseason. It's the same elbow that experienced inflammation after his last start on June 28 that resulted in an IL stint.

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