Devin Williams’ first month within the pinstripes might hardly have gotten off to an uglier begin, as the previous NL Rookie of the 12 months has an 11.25 ERA over his first eight innings of the season. The Yankees’ 4-2 loss to the Blue Jays on Friday noticed Williams file his first blown save of the 12 months, as he was charged with three earned runs after failing to retire any of the three batters he confronted within the ninth inning.
Within the aftermath of that tough outing, Yankees supervisor Aaron Boone indicated that the staff could also be contemplating a change to the nearer function. When requested if the Yankees may transfer Williams to lower-leverage work, Boone advised The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner and different reporters “we’ll see,” including that “We’ll sort of discuss via that stuff. That is uncooked proper now. We need to do every little thing we will to get him proper as a result of we all know how good he’s and the way precious he’s going to be for us.”
The Yankees had been rained out in in the present day’s scheduled recreation with the Jays, however Boone nonetheless met with the media (together with the New York Publish’s Greg Joyce), and mentioned that he hadn’t but gotten an opportunity to talk with Williams in regards to the state of affairs. The skipper additionally framed Williams’ struggles as simply momentary, saying that Williams has “been one of many dominant closers within the league. I do know the outcomes haven’t been nice but. A number of the stuff remains to be there, the profile of the changeup remains to be there….He hasn’t gotten swung and miss. He’s been behind within the depend a little bit bit. As soon as he begins flipping that and begins getting some depend leverage, I count on him to return to being the dominant nearer he’s been.”
Boone isn’t incorrect in noting that eight innings shouldn’t erase the six seasons of elite work that Williams delivered with the Brewers from 2019-2024. Beginning as a set-up man after which as Milwaukee’s nearer as soon as Josh Hader was traded, Williams posted an eye-opening 1.83 ERA and 39.4% strikeout fee in 235 2/3 innings in a Brewers uniform. An inflated 11.8% stroll fee was the one query mark in an in any other case spectacular run for the right-hander, whose “Airbender” changeup grew to become one of many sport’s deadliest pitches.
This season, the Airbender has solely led to crooked numbers on the scoreboard, as Statcast ranks Williams’ changeup as a below-average pitch (a -1 in Run Worth in 2025 following a +15 RV in 2024). This one in every of a number of metrics which have fallen off the cliff for Williams, as his strikeout fee is all the way down to 18.2% and he’s permitting way more exhausting contact than typical.
The shortage of manufacturing was clearly by no means what the Yankees anticipated once they acquired Williams from the Brewers in December for a commerce bundle of Nestor Cortes, Caleb Durbin, and $2MM to assist cowl the $7.6MM that Cortes is incomes for the 2025 season. Since Cortes is on the 60-day injured record resulting from a flexor pressure and Durbin has solely simply made his Main League debut, the deal has principally been a lose-lose for each groups to this point — a stunning final result for what was one of many winter’s greatest trades.
The deal was supposed to bolster the again finish of New York’s pen, regardless that Luke Weaver blossomed after changing into the nearer within the wake of Clay Holmes’ struggles final 12 months. Weaver has continued to look nice this season, and can be the logical selection as the highest saves candidate if Williams was briefly faraway from the nearer function. With Williams because the obvious exception, the Yankees’ aid corps has largely pitched fairly nicely in 2025, as a less-heralded commerce acquisition in Fernando Cruz has delivered the kind of shutdown work New York anticipated from Williams.
Whereas Williams nonetheless pitched nicely in 2024, his output came visiting solely 21 2/3 innings, as a stress fracture in his again saved him on the injured record till late July. Williams’ 12 months then ended on the bitter observe of an notorious blown save in Recreation 3 of the NLDS, as a 2-0 lead within the ninth inning for the Brewers turned from a possible sequence victory to devastation, as Williams allowed the Mets to attain 4 runs in an eventual 4-2 win for the Amazins.
With nonetheless simply eight innings of a pattern dimension to gauge, it’s too simplistic to say that Williams remains to be dwelling on that brutal loss, or that he isn’t adjusting nicely to the change of surroundings from Milwaukee to the Bronx. The transfer to the higher-pressure atmosphere, nonetheless, does include a bigger highlight that tends to enlarge any stoop, and the truth that such slumps have been so uncommon for Williams in his profession have a tendency to boost questions, and invite the potential for a task change. It could possibly be that that is only a bump within the street and Williams will likely be again in his outdated type quickly, although each tough outing might hamper Williams’ incomes potential in free company this coming winter.
