Last month, Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said he hoped newly signed starter Patrick Sandoval could contribute to Boston’s starting rotation at some point in the second half of 2025. It’s a timetable that Sandoval is very much on board with.

Appearing on MassLive’s Fenway Rundown podcast Thursday, Sandoval — who clarified that he underwent an internal brace procedure, and not full Tommy John surgery, on his pitching elbow in early July — said he started his throwing program a couple weeks ago and is progressing well ahead of spring training, which begins in three-plus weeks.

“Starting to feel more and more like an athlete every day,” Sandoval said. “That’s kind of the biggest grind of it at the beginning, not being able to do much activity at all and then slowly ramping up. I’m in a good spot and I feel really good.

“To get back and be able to compete and help this team win games down the stretch, that’s my goal for this year,” he added. “To be able to work my way back and be able to compete in those games.”

Sandoval, whose 107 major league appearances (100 starts) have all come with the Angels, was expecting to be back in Anaheim next season. An arbitration-eligible player for the second time, the 28-year-old wasn’t a free agent until he was non-tendered by the Angels, in surprising fashion, on November 22. That decision suddenly thrust Sandoval onto the open market for the first time his career and started a process that finished on December 20 when he agreed to a two-year, $18.25 million agreement with Boston.

“I wasn’t expecting it at all,” Sandoval said. “I got a call like two minutes before the tender deadline. My agent had let me know that they decided not to tender me. I didn’t really know how to feel. I understood, me coming back from injury, they might not want to pay me that money to just sit and rehab for a year. And they have the right to do that.

“But the whole free agent experience was insane. You’re not expecting it. I’m thinking I still have two more years until I get that opportunity to choose which team I want to play for. The whole recruiting process or whatever you want to call it, it kind of brought me back to like the high school days of having colleges come and talk to you.”

The Red Sox jumped into the mix for Sandoval very early and were aggressive suitors. Pitching coach Andrew Bailey, who had worked with Sandoval during his time with the Angels in 2019, created an individualized progress plan for the lefty. Sandoval also knows new bullpen coach Chris Holt from their shared time in the Astros organization, righty Lucas Giolito from the righty’s brief stint with the Halos in 2023 and Jarren Duran from playing with him on Team Mexico in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

At the end of the day, though, it was the organization’s pitch to Sandoval that lured him to Boston.

“The confidence they had in myself, plus what I could bring and what they could bring to me, I think ultimately meshed together,” Sandoval said. “I’m super grateful to be part of this historic franchise and to be able to play in Fenway, which is one of — if not my favorite — stadiums in all of baseball.

“Everything they presented me aligned with how I wanted to progress and I thought this would be a huge stepping stone in my career.”

For Sandoval, who reportedly had serious interest from the Phillies and other teams, the free agent process was more of a confidence-builder than a stressor.

“The amount of teams that were lining up to talk to me, it was a huge confidence boost,” he said. “Going through this, getting let go, obviously it’s not the greatest feeling in the world.

“It brought my spirits up a little bit just hearing all the teams that wanted to come talk to me, then talking to them. Then ultimately, choosing Boston, I was on Cloud Nine. I’m still coming down from it. It’s a huge blessing and I couldn’t be more grateful to the organization.”

Sandoval has some personal history in Boston, as he made his first big league start at Fenway on August 11, 2019. A southern California native who attended USC, then spent the first six years of his big league career with the Angels, he’s looking forward to experiencing baseball in the Northeast on a full-time basis.

“East coast fans, it’s just different,” he said. “Different cultures out there, different types of people,” Sandoval said. “There’s a different level of passion they have for their teams and it’s amazing to see.”

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