Rick Hahn: 'No Magic Number' On Carlos Rodon's Innings Workload
(CBS) A day after highly touted left-hander Carlos Rodon made his major league debut, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn said there's "no magic number" on how many innings Rodon will be allowed to pitch this season.
Chicago will initially use the 22-year-old Rodon out of the bullpen, as he only had 34 1/3 professional innings under his belt before his call-up. Rodon allowed two runs in 2 1/3 innings in his debut Tuesday, when Chicago fell 6-2 to Cleveland.
"There's no magic number here," Hahn said in an interview on the Spiegel and Goff Show. "No one is smart enough to tell us Carlos has X number of effective innings this year. It may well be 80 or 85, or he could get to 140 and be as strong as an ox and everything's mechanically sound and he's mentally sharp.
"What we do know is that it's not going to be the normal starter's workload."
The White Sox entertained the idea of putting Rodon in the rotation immediately -- the fourth and fifth starter spots appear to be a weakness -- but didn't want to have to shut him down late in the season, which is what the Nationals did with young phenom Stephen Strasburg in 2012.
"We certainly thought about it, but at the end, we're dealing with 2015, in terms of Carlos' innings, is essentially a scarce resource," Hahn said. "It's not reasonable for any kid a year out of the ACC to take the ball 33-some odd times and average five or six innings a start during that and expect him to be effective and strong into the summer, much less the fall.
"From our standpoint, the thought is let's maximize the benefit and the major league level from this kid. So having him down in (Triple-A) Charlotte making starts every fifth day really wasn't conducive to doing that. And if we feel like we're going to be in this mix at the end, instead of giving him the ball every fifth day up front to start the season and basically being in a situation similar to what Washington had with (Stephen) Strasburg a few years back and shutting him down in August and having him potentially watch the playoffs wasn't that palatable."
"We're … going to have whatever innings he's able to provide us more readily available over the length of the entire season as opposed to front-loading them."
Rodon's future is certainly as a starter, and Hahn believes he has the chops to be a top-of-the-rotation go-to guy.
"Once he gets in between those lines, he's an absolute fierce competitor," Hahn said. "He's very similar to (Chris Sale and Jeff Samardzija) in that regard and has that sort of little something extra in him. Some of the terms for which I can't use on the air, it's what helps make him a front end-type guy. That's going to serve him well."
