Alexander Wilson
There was genuine uncertainty heading into this season about how the Yankees would survive April and May without Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon. The full picture of Friday’s home opener tells the story of an 8-2 win over the Marlins powered by the offense, but the person doing the most important work for the New York Yankees right now is Will Warren, who went 5.2 innings, surrendered four hits, and allowed only two solo home runs while striking out six.
Through two starts, Warren owns a 2.70 ERA over 10 innings with a 55.2% ground ball rate, a 97.6% left-on-base rate, and a strikeout rate of 8.10 per nine. More importantly, the walk rate has dropped considerably from last season. He is not a perfect pitcher and nobody is pretending otherwise, but he is doing something very specific this year that is generating better results than anything his rookie season produced consistently.
The Pitch Mix Is the Story
His Fangraphs splits this season show a pitcher who has made a genuine strategic shift rather than just throwing harder and hoping for the best. Warren has increased his sinker usage by roughly 10 percentage points from 2025, making his fastball family the clear centerpiece of how he attacks hitters. The sweeper, which he was relying on more heavily last year, is down to 16.3% usage. His changeup and curveball are appearing at less than 4% each, essentially serving as show pitches to keep hitters from sitting on the primary fastballs.
The reasoning behind the shift is straightforward. Warren was not a bad pitcher last season, but his 42.1% ground ball rate left too many balls in the air for a pitcher without elite velocity or spin. The Yankees identified the sinker as the pitch most likely to change that and have been building his approach around it since the offseason. The early results support the theory. His four-seamer is producing a .211 batting average against this season and his sinker is at .200. Hitters are not squaring up the fastball family the way they did in 2025, and the ground ball rate is the clearest evidence of why.
The velocity on both fastballs is trending upward as well, which matters because more velocity on a sinker with good arm-side run makes the pitch genuinely difficult to elevate. When a hitter cannot get under the ball, the ground balls follow. Warren is generating exactly that outcome right now.
What He Needs to Be This Season
I want to be careful not to project a complete transformation from two starts. Warren gave up two solo shots on Friday, which means he is still susceptible to mistakes over the middle of the plate, and that is not going to change entirely. He is a mid-rotation arm figuring out how to be the best version of that rather than something he is not.
What the Yankees need from him is durability and consistency, not dominance. He has never thrown 150 innings in a professional season, and reaching the 180-inning target the organization has in mind would represent the healthiest year of his career by a significant margin. Getting there requires managing pitch counts, staying away from deep counts with dangerous hitters, and trusting the sinker to do its job without asking too much from the secondary arsenal.
Through two outings, that version of Warren is exactly what has showed up. If it holds for another ten starts, the Yankees will have navigated one of the more difficult early-season situations any contender has faced in recent memory without giving up an inch of ground in the standings.
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