Why the Yankees’ first impression of Ryan Weathers was so exciting

Everyone should know by now that Spring Training results do not matter, but the Yankees were certainly blown away by what they saw from Ryan Weathers last night against the Washington Nationals.

Maybe they were not that shocked; Brian Cashman flipped four prospects to the Miami Marlins for the oft-injured southpaw despite the team’s need for some stability in their rotation over a risky gamble.

People around the organization have buzzed about his potential, but it wasn’t the eye-popping velocity that caught my eyes as much as it was the material changes to his pitch mix.

The Yankees have one of the best pitch design labs in the entire sport and they put it on full display with Ryan Weathers, who didn’t just look like a breakout candidate but a potential frontline starter on a World Series contender.

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Ryan Weathers Showed Off His New Changes in Yankees’ Debut

One of the biggest issues that Ryan Weathers had over the last two seasons was his poor performance against left-handed batters, who crushed his four-seamer to the tune of a 1.184 SLG%.

This prompted the left-hander to search for a better sinker, as he only threw nine of them to his same-handed opponents over that two-year window, and he found just that last night.

Weathers’ sinker had 18.5 inches of arm-side movement which should allow him to buzz lefties inside and keep them from generating insanely high SLG% numbers against him in 2026.

His usual counter to lefties had been his sweeping slider, but he made sure to make tweaks to that pitch of well, picking up over 200 RPMS of spin and ~5 inches of additional glove-side movement for more devastating movement.

A newfound sinker-sweeper mix could be how Ryan Weathers beats his left-handed demons, and it immediately improves the floor and ceiling of his mix.

Matt Blake and the Yankees’ pitching development group weren’t done here; the left-hander also made massive changes to his gyro slider, adding four inches of drop and three inches of sweep to make it an elite offering.

He picked up three strikeouts on this pitch, all against right-handed batters, as this sharp slider with tight downward action is a hard counter to power hitting righties who often struggle to handle vertical deception from lefties.

Another weapon he can use at the bottom of the zone is his wicked changeup, which added about two inches of depth despite the fact that it was already a plus pitch for him in his career.

With two plus secondaries that he can use at the bottom of the zone for chases and whiffs, Ryan Weathers can use his power four-seamer selectively at the top of the zone to get ahead in the count.

I was floored with how good his mix looked, and while I wouldn’t buy too hard into the 98.5 average four-seam velocity, the materal changes to his pitch plot could make him into a stud.

You Shouldn’t Discount a Mid-Career Breakout For Ryan Weathers

The incredibly-high pitch grades on Ryan Weathers’ mix last night resembled the likes of a frontline Game 1 starter, but his depth of repertoire and feel for mixing it up was just as impressive.

It’s easy to refute these points by pointing to how strong his repertoire looked last Spring Training, sitting close to 98 MPH on his fastball as he looked poised to breakout on numerous fantasy teams before injuries derailed him.

You can tell this story about a lot of mid-20s lefties in recent memory; I pooled the six left-handed pitchers last season who recorded at least 4.0 WAR on FanGraphs to find their first season with at least 3 WAR in a season:

The median breakout age here is 25.6 years old, Ryan Weathers just turned 26 this past December, is it really that crazy for him to stay healthy and put it altogether in 2026?

A lot of these pitchers had their breakouts delayed due to Tommy John Surgeries or inconsistency on the mound, some of them even had big injury issues and sharp regressions that they had to rebound from after their first 3 WAR season.

You aren’t chasing the next Tarik Skubal (it would be nice though), you’re hoping that your left-handed starter with clear frontline upside can just make enough starts to take that next step.

Over the past two seasons Ryan Weathers has a 3.74 ERA and 4.03 xFIP, it’s not elite but that wouldn’t be an outcome you stick your nose at if it came over ~130-140 innings in 2026.

With the changes that he has displayed early on though I think he can be much better than that, and you should be really excited about wha the Yankees could get out of him in 2026.