Ryan Garcia
A wirey right-hander out of little-known Southeastern Louisiana University, Will Warren was the Yankees’ 8th Round Pick in the 2021 MLB Draft.
While the focus is always placed on how the Yankees landed Ben Rice in the 12th Round of the 2021 Draft, the selection of Warren is incredibly impressive as well.
This wasn’t a pitcher with elite level velocity or the physical traits to begin pumping upper-90s heat regularly, but rather someone who displayed excellent spin capacity and a funky release.
Now leveraging all of his mechanical oddities, the 26-year-old has mastered a skill that could allow him to become a steady mid-rotation arm for the Yankees.
What’s that skill? Keeping the bat on a hitter’s shoulders.
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Will Warren’s Secret to Staying In the Yankees’ Rotation
The Yankees have praised Will Warren’s competitive and confident demeanor, and he is certainly attacking hitters as if he has a 99 MPH fastball that can’t be beat in-zone.
He’s defying conventional modern-day beliefs about pitching, using his four-seamer and sinker 68% of the time despite neither pitch having eye-popping traits that would suggest he should be doing so.
When you look deeper into his mechanics you get a better picture of why he’s adopted a fastball-heavy approach, as the right-hander has one of the most deceptive release points in the game.
One of the immediate quirks that you can see in Will Warren’s delivery is his crossbody arm motion, as his arm speed and rotational force have allowed him to add a little more juice to those pitches in the early parts of the season.
You might have also remembered this Gary Phillips’ article from the New York Daily News where he discovered that Will Warren had actually positioned himself towards the third base mound.
This small change had a massive effect on his release point, as he went from having releasing the ball -2.5 feet towards third base to -3.55 feet towards third, one of the widest releases for a righty in the entire sport.
Where this ties into his heavy fastball usage is that he’s now able to more effectively steal strikes with his sinker to lefties by throwing the front-hip sinker that pitchers such as Michael King and Sonny Gray have mastered.
He’s increased his sinker usage to lefties from 7% last season to 17.6% this season, as it’s held them to a .220 xwOBA with a ridiculous 25.6% Called Strike%.
This front-hip sinker has given pitchers like the aforementioned King and Gray the ability to get lefties out despite having the east-west mixes that often leave a pitcher vulnerable to those opposite-handed matchups.
It’s too small of a sample size to conclude much, but his K% against lefties has increased from 19.9% to 30.5% while his wOBA allowed has decreased from .342 to .312.
The damage contact has certainly been an issue for Warren in these matchups (1.88 HR/9), but I think part of that is an unsustainably high 23.1% HR/FB%, which should decrease with a larger sample size.
Will Warren has a 2.49 ERA through his first five starts of 2026, and a 3.91 ERA over his last 31 starts, we’re starting to see a mid-rotation starter crystalize after learning from the beatings put on him by some elite offenses in 2025.
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