BALTIMORE — Whenever Carlos Rodón has pitched this season, he’s looked like someone who just walked through a water park.
Such was the case on March 29 in Houston, when Rodón’s waterlogged uniform grabbed more attention than his performance in his season debut. With the roof closed at the climate-controlled Minute Maid Park, the lefty didn’t feel like he sweat all that much that day. Yet Rodón’s road jersey was a significantly darker shade of grey than it was supposed to be before he went through a mid-game costume change.
Carlos Rodon’s sweat glands pic.twitter.com/lJTI49PW0v
— MLB Errors (@mlberrors) March 30, 2024
No, Rodón doesn’t have a perspiration problem.
Rather, a lack of absorption is one of several problems players have had with this year’s new Nike uniforms, which are manufactured by Fanatics. Other complaints have included small lettering and poor spacing for names; mismatching shades of grey between jerseys and pants, and transparent material showing off ballplayers’ nether regions.
On Monday, multiple reports said that MLB planned on addressing their widely-panned threads by the start of the 2025 season. However, Rodón has already become associated with the uniforms’ inability to soak up sweat.
Even his wife, Ashley, called Rodón the “face for the fight against the new uniforms” when multiple news outlets used photos of the drenched pitcher when sharing Monday’s news.
Didn’t have Carlos as the face for the fight against the new uniforms on my list of potential accomplishments for the year… here we are😂☠️ https://t.co/j0NmzkJ73t
— Ashley Rodón (@AshleyRodon) April 29, 2024
“I guess. I didn’t realize it,” a laughing Rodón told the Daily News when asked if he knew he was leading this fight. “It is what it is. It’s kind of one of those things that we don’t have much control over. We just put on the jersey, go play. I’m out there competing. I’m not thinking about my jersey.”
With that said, Rodón has certainly noticed the sweat build up, even on days that haven’t been particularly hot.
“You could feel a little heaviness when it starts getting wet, starts getting a little saturated,” he said. “But when that happens, I’ll change the jersey. If I have to change again, I’ll change it again.”
Rodón added that it’s not a pain in the you know what to change during a game, but he’d rather not have to do it. He also said he had hoped for more urgency when it came to the league addressing the uniform problems.
“I would have liked it to happen sooner,” Rodón said. “But I understand the ins and outs of that. It could be one, costly and two, take a while, and things can go wrong.”
Rodón figured the Yankees probably have some older jerseys lying around that he could wear as the weather gets warmer, but that would probably violate some sort of contract or statute.
He didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, including himself.
“Rules are rules,” Rodón said. “They’re meant to be followed.”