Ryan Garcia
Injuries are always surrounding a team’s plans like a pack of hungry hyenas, but the Yankees have almost certainly had conversations about how they plan to handle a potential rotation logjam.
Gerrit Cole is 1-2 rehab starts away from returning to the club and it puts Ryan Weathers and Will Warren under the spotlight in what is certainly going to be a fascinating debate.
On one hand you have a hard-throwing left-handed pitcher with a 3.00 ERA who has looked like one of the best rotation acquisitions of the offseason to this point.
On the other, the Yankees’ 8th Round Pick from the 2021 MLB Draft is flourishing into a relaible no. 3 starter with serious upside to be in the top-half of a contender’s rotation.
How should the Yankees handle these two talented arms, and is there really a right or wrong answer?
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Should the Yankees Use Will Warren or Ryan Weathers In the Bullpen?
There was a point in time a couple of weeks ago where I felt like Will Warren had pulled away from Ryan Weathers, but a clunker against the Texas Rangers paired with a nine-strikeout performance from the southpaw has altered things.
I view Warren as the easier arm to project in a starter’s role; he carries a less scary injury track record and his excellent fastball success makes me trust his results a bit more.
We should not discount the advantages that Ryan Weathers provides here though; the left-hander has better swing-and-miss rates while having the highest Called Strike% in the entire sport.
He’s figured out how to zone his fastballs to steal strikes and avoid damage contact, setting batters up for his changeup, sweeper, or gyro slider.
Ryan Weathers reminds me a lot of former Miami Marlins left-hander Jesus Luzardo, uber-talented pitchers with fastballs that allow loud contact despite their excellent velocity.
After being traded they backed off of their heaters and began leaning more on their excellent secondary pitches, and both have seen notable improvements as a result.
The right-tail outcomes for Ryan Weathers could be better than the right-tail outcomes for Will Warren as a result of his ability to both miss bats and rack up called strikes, but the collapse risk is far greater.
Sometimes Weathers is going to miss with heaters and get ambushed, much like we saw against the Los Angeles Angels where he allowed three consecutive home runs on heaters down in the zone.
You could also argue that the elite-level Called Strike + Whiff% numbers make him the perfect candidate for a bullpen role given how shaky the Yankees’ high-leverage options can be.
Will Warren could be the better reliever option because of his similarties to Michael King, the Yankees would know how his role could best contract and his success in the first 2-3 innings of a ballgame are valuable.
Since 2025, Warren has a 30.6% K% and a .388 opponent SLG% in the first two innings of a baseball game, that kind of production would certainly be of great use to the Bronx Bombers’ bullpen.
Weathers does not share that same quirk in his game, largely weighed down by that disastrous first inning against the Angels, but he also likely has better top-end velocity at 100-101 MPH that he can reach back for in shorter spurts.
I ultimately believe you could make an argument in either direction for both Ryan Weathers and Will Warren when evaluating their skillset and Major League performance, but there’s one variable that might be a deciding factor.
Will Warren pitched 162.1 IP in the regular season with 4.2 innings of postseason work last season while Ryan Weathers had 38.1 IP in the regular season and 18 IP of rehab assignment work at the Minor League level.
The Yankees are rapidly seeing Weathers approach his innings count from last season and would likely benefit from throwing him a reliever role both short-term and long-term.
In the short-term, they limit some of the injury risk while building his innings count without completely eliminating him from returning to the rotation by keeping him in a multi-inning role.
They also aren’t consolidating long-term value since Weathers is almost certainly going to be better built-up innings-wise even if he serves as a reliever primarily down the stretch since he’ll have around 90-100 IP by season’s end.
Rather than having to give Ryan Weathers some time off to avoid him exceeding his 2025 innings count by 100 IP or more, he can continue providing value to the Yankees.
If he excels in the bullpen and Will Warren continues being steady in the rotation, the team will have addressed one of their biggest issues and could avoid over-exposing their newest pitching acquisition to injury risk.
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