Ryan Garcia
Very quietly, Will Warren has had an excellent Spring Training where the Yankees have seen him pitch into games and just pound the strike zone.
He’s coming off of a season where he played the important-yet-bland role of being an innings eater who could pitch competitive innings when he was on.
There’s room for improvement; he had a fairly large gap in his ERA and xFIP, which indicates some poor luck that could reverse itself in 2026.
I do think anyone who watched Warren would say that there’s more than luck that needs to change, and the Yankees are going to need that to keep their rotation afloat all season.
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Will Warren is the Yankees’ Warm Bowl of Oatmeal
The Yankees got 33 starts from Will Warren last season; it wasn’t really all that appetizing but the team needed just that throughout the course of the season.
It’s a lot like some cheap instant oatmeal; you really aren’t that enthused or blown away when you have it, but the base of a pretty good and healthy breakfast is there.
Adding some fruit for freshness and granola for texture can make a boring dish into a nutrient-rich delight, and Will Warren is seemingly adding some of those new flavors to his profile.
He’s added nearly a foot to his horizontal release point by just shuffling his feet over to the third-base side of the mound, creating some difficult looks for opposing hitters.
A higher Horizontal Approach Angle (HAA) can give hitters the impression that a pitch is breaking more horizontally than it actually is when it approaches the plate.
This has come with an increase in his Whiff% (28.2%) and Chase% (28%) so far in Spring Training, which isn’t exactly predictive data this time of year but gives us a glimpse as to what could come of these changes.
I’m not anticipating some massive leap from a good no. 5 starter to a frontline guy who the Yankees want to throw in Game 1 or 2 of a playoff series, but can he pitch deeper into games?
Warren averaged just under five innings a start; there needs to be more efficiency on a start-to-start basis in order to justify keeping him in a somewhat-healthy rotation.
Being able to attack the zone with fastballs and get ahead of hitters can cut down on some of the walks and get more count leverage, setting Will Warren up to get past the fifth inning consistently.
I’m not expecting some leap into a 3.30 ERA starter who puts up ~4 WAR, but rather something resembling what Nestor Cortes did in 2024.
He recorded 30 starts with a 107 ERA+ and likely would have recorded more innings had he not suffered a late-season injury to his elbow that threatened to end both his 2024 and 2025 seasons.
In a rotation loaded with upside and collapse risk, the Yankees need a dependable option that can provide solid results with lots of volume.
Will Warren has a chance to be just that; a relatively mundane dish on the surface that doesn’t sound too appealing until you get a whiff of that warm hearty goodness and realize it’s exactly what you needed.
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