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Devin Williams officially arrived to the New York Yankees in mid-December shortly after Juan Soto signed with the crosstown Mets and was touted as possessing one of the best changeups in baseball.
The numbers backed it up also, so it is natural to expect to pitch to keep being effective in a new setting.
A little under a month into his first and possibly only year with the Yankees the opposite is true, and it is the reason why Williams spoke in somber tones about the frustration of nothing working for him and how it was on him to figure things out. The quiet reflection under the glare of recorders and TV cameras soon to air on the YES Network postgame occurred nearly an hour after the highly touted pitch failed him again.
The pitch failed him when Alejandro Kirk put a good swing on a 1-0 offering and lifted it over center fielder Trent Grisham’s head for a two-run double. The hit resulted in the Toronto Blue Jays taking the lead, eventually winning and causing Williams to be pulled before it could any worse with boos cascading his slow and painful walk to the dugout.
In reality, the outing was a nightmare from the outset. He three ball three on a changeup to George Springer and the next pitch was a single off his fastball and then after getting mixed results with two changeups to Andres Gimenez, he wound up hitting the second baseman with a fastball.
“It’s getting pretty frustrating,” Williams said after his first blown save saw his ERA spike from 7.88 to an even more unsightly 11.25. “Nothing’s working right now,”
By then the chants of “We Want Weaver” were loud and highly noticeable and when Williams walked off the mound opponents were hitting 6-for-22 (.273) off the pitch whieh he has thrown 108 times for an average of 84.6 mph – 9.1 mph lower than the average on his 85 four-seam fastballs.
Last year, Williams used the pitch 45 percent of the time and hitters were 6-for-37 (.162) against it. In 2023, it was .177 (13-for-134), in 2022 it was .185 (23-for-124), in 2021, it was .161 (25-for-155).
The changeup is designed to counter fastballs, but Williams is struggling with it as secondary pitch. So far, opponents are hitting 6-for-13 (.462) against the pitch after going 15-for-98 off the pitch in the previous two seasons.
Since Mariano Rivera threw his final pitch in 2013, the closing situation has produced mixed results for the Yankees. David Robertson saved 39 games in 2014, Andrew Miller followed with 36 in 2015 before the Yankees acquired Aroldis Chapman, traded him to the Chicago Cubs for Gleyber Torres and re-signed him after he celebrated the Cubs winning the World Series for the first time since 2008.
Chapman notched 153 saves for the Yankees while getting amongst the highest contracts for closers at the time. He 101 of those saves between 2017 through 2019 and had 30 more in 2021 which was often felt like an adventure with things like allowing a grand slam in the rain at 1:15 am to the Los Angeles Angels or a spectacular meltdown against the Mets on July 4, 2021.
By 2022 Chapman was massively struggling and towards the latter portion of the season, Clay Holmes was his replacement. Holmes held the job until Sept. 4, 2024 when he allowed a game-ending grand slam to Wyatt Langford in Texas.
Holmes blew 13 saves opportunities for a 94-win team last season and while some of it was bad luck or shaky defense behind him, the number of blown saves on a division winner was noticeable, just like each of Williams shaky appearances.
Ideally closing is a matter of three quick outs and perhaps Wiliams will get those outs quickly at some point before hitting free agent. So far, the only outing fitting that description was the six pitches he threw on April 17 against the Rays when he notched each out with his changeup.
For now Williams will remain a high-wire act who may or not be in there for save chances the next few times that situation arises for the Yankees, who may get two saves chances Sunday.
“I believe that the stuff is very much still there,” manager Aaron Boone told reporters Saturday morning after rain postponed a decision on save chances for at least one day. “He has all the equipment to be great at this. So that’s a good place to start.
“This isn’t a guy that’s past his prime [or] anything like that. This is a guy that’s in the middle [of his career] and has a track record of not just success but dominance. So when you have that baseline, there’s always a way out. There’s always a way to get there. We’ll continue to lean into that and try and help him unlock it.
“And I feel once he gets on a roll, he will.”
Until then, the Yankees will hope to see the signature changeup succeed as well as it did in the past.
