Brent Headrick is a reliever who the Yankees have high hopes for according to Jack Curry of YES Network, who noted the upside they believe him to have earlier in the offseason.
A big left-hander who gets ton of carry on his fastball with some good secondary weapons, he displayed excellent swing-and-miss stuff in his debut season in the Bronx.
He sported a 3.13 ERA and struck out over 32% of batters faced in 17 appearances for the Bronx Bombers, and in 2026 his role could be elevated as the team cut ties with a lot of their veteran bullpen depth.
Without names like Ian Hamilton, Scott Effross, or Mark Leiter Jr. getting reps over him, the path for Headrick to make the Yankees’ bullpen is a lot cleaner, and he could end up rewarding the organization with a big season.
Why the Yankees Are Buying Brent Headrick Stock For the Upcoming Season
Last season the Yankees saw massive leaps in both velocity and effectiveness from Brent Headrick’s four-seam fastball, as it generated a 25.4% Whiff% and a .295 wOBA.
He threw his fastball over 63% of the time during the 2025 season which goes against the growing trend of pitchers who tend to avoid relying a lot on just one fastball shape.
In the previous seasons he spent in the big leagues, Headrick displayed a fairly underwhelming fastball in both velocity and shape, leading to the Twins placing him on waivers for any team to claim.
The league let him fall into the Yankees’ hands, and they turned the Minnesota cast-off into someone who has real hopes of being a high-leverage arm in 2026.
The elite-level whiff rates that we saw from Brent Headrick last season would be a welcome addition to the bullpen with names like Devin Williams and Luke Weaver no longer part of the team.
Brent Headrick’s fastball is a big part of this, averaging nearly 19 inches of ride with tons of extension that makes his 94 MPH play like an elite pitch in-zone.
As for his slider and splitter, these two pitches didn’t see a ton of action early on but as Headrick gained more comfort throwing his secondaries he performed significantly better.
Both pitches rely on their sharp dropping action to play off of the fastball, as the vertical separation can be difficult for opposing batters to pick up, especially righties.
During the 2025 season Brent Headrick struck out 34.6% of righties faced and held them to a .170 AVG, but how can he take steps to get even better in 2026?
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The Missing Piece For Brent Headrick To Become a High-Leverage Weapon
Brent Headrick’s repertoire lacks anything that has lateral break away from lefties, and while he performed brilliantly against righties, that success wasn’t translated in left-on-left matchups.
Lefties slugged .667 against his four-seamer and .538 against his slider, and while the expected SLG% numbers would indicate there was some poor luck involved there, he was worse against them than he was against righties.
As highlighted in his pitch plot, the lack of anything that can move laterally (especially away from lefties) creates issues for Headrick since same-handed batters tend to perform better against vertical deception than horizontal deception.
The angles created upon release based on your handedness and the pitcher’s handedness is the root of why pitchers throw multiple fastballs or breaking balls, manipulating movement and pitch usage to match the situation.
Brent Headrick is a high spin efficiency pronator, meaning he tends to get behind the baseball rather than getting around it in the way that a lefty such as Max Fried does.
It’s why the tall southpaw generates so much ride on his fastball but it also explains the lack of big lateral movement on his pitches, however the Yankees already have a lefty with this same release bias in Carlos Rodon.
Rodon is someone who also gets a ton of spin efficiency on his fastball because he gets behind the ball very well, and similar to Headrick he had enough feel of lateral movement to throw a quality offspeed pitch.
Using seam-shifted wake, a concept that relies on seam orientation over spin to generate movement, Rodon was able to begin throwing a reliable sinker, and I believe the same could be true for Brent Headrick.
Even if the pitch isn’t particularly excellent, the ability to throw a second fastball shape should help him with his biggest issue against lefties, which is quality of contact, not quantity of contact.
If the Yankees can find a way to get Brent Headrick throwing a fourth pitch like a sinker, he could be one of their best relievers in 2026, as he showed this past season that he has disgusting stuff with elite swing-and-miss potential.
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