Will Warren continues to impress me during Yankees‘ Spring Training, as just hours before the official news came out that Gerrit Cole would need season-ending Tommy John Surgery, he tossed 3.2 innings of one-run ball against the Tigers. It wasn’t his sharpest outing, but it was perhaps the one that left me the most impressed with his progress from 2024.
It wasn’t a pretty performance, but the normally easy-to-rattle starter displayed some real maturity in what was the first tough inning of his camp to this point. This is where things would fall apart for him in 2024; with runners on base, batters had a .925 OPS against Will Warren at Triple-A and a 1.176 OPS against him in the Major Leagues.
This outing gave the Tigers chance-after-chance to expose Warren when he was having a tough afternoon that saw some rainfall earlier in the morning, and he passed a test that in my eyes should make him the team’s fifth starter if healthy.
Will Warren Showing the Yankees Newfound Poise On the Mound
After an error by Scranton teammate Jorbit Vivas that likely botched what should have been an inning-ending double play, Gleyber Torres would rocket a double to drive in two runs. With Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene coming up and a runner in scoring position, this was the perfect time for the Tigers to break Will Warren.
Instead, he fired back with a first-pitch changeup that caused Carpenter to roll over, then he needed just three pitches to set down Greene, using that same changeup for an ugly whiff. One small moment during an exhibition game shouldn’t matter enough to say that Will Warren would dominate in the big leagues, but it did feel like he was far better equipped to handle this scenario than he was last year.
Austin Wells did talk about changes in his mentality back in February. which made me wonder if perhaps there’s just something different about who he is at the moment.
“He has a chip on his shoulder. Coming back with a little bit of vengeance and wants to improve”
Austin Wells and Will Warren are close, as they were batterymates in Somerset and Scranton and share a strong relationship as a result, so his words definitely hold some weight to me. Last year was nothing short of a disaster at the Major League level even if the underlying metrics suggested he shouldn’t have been nearly as bad as he actually was. The feeling I would get at times is that the talent didn’t match the confidence or poise on the mound, which is normal for a rookie but is something that can be hard to overcome in a market like New York.
He didn’t ask for pity or for patience, he showed up with an excellent changeup and brought back his old curveball to help against left-handed batters. The four-seamer has looked sharp while his sinker command has been excellent, and I feel like we’re watching someone with immense talent grow up in front of our own eyes. The Yankees fell in love with Warren all the way back in 2021 when they used an eighth-round pick on him despite not having much public hype, as he would blossom into one of their better prospects during the 2022 season.
His high RPMs and disgusting movement profiles made it easy to see how he could become a stud at the Major League level, but the maturation process on the mound has led to a whole new level being unlocked here. This could be a Spring Training hype train that falls off the rails by April, but the work he’s done to make himself a tough matchup against lefties is legit.
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I’m usually not the kind of guy to care about things like whether a pitcher can avoid being “rattled” or not, but baseball sometimes requires watching someone pitch to make an observation that can be backed up by data. There were moments all season that made you wonder how someone as talented as Will Warren could be as easily overwhelmed by MLB hitters, as when he could locate his slider or fastball it was hard to do much of anything.
The data would tell us that Will Warren absolutely got rattled in these spots; 14.2% of his pitches were waste pitches versus 9.9% when no one was on, and while that seems insignificant, it absolutely matters when trying to maintain count leverage. Batters rarely offer at waste pitches, it’s a very self-descriptive label, and it could be an indication of poor execution in those situations.
Will Warren has thrown just five (8.6%) waste pitches with runners on this Spring Training, executing his pitches over and over again in scenarios where he couldn’t last season. Talent was never the question for Will Warren, who pops in almost any pitch quality metric, but whether he could handle the mental strain of pitching in tough spots at the Major League level or not absolutely was.
Pitching is already hard enough, and it’s not made much easier by the thousands of fans booing you off the mound. Outings where Will Warren doesn’t have it are bound to happen, but how he battles in these situations is what will ultimately make him (or break him). It’ll be the difference between a quick demotion to Scranton or a meteoric rise that the Yankees will desperately hope for with Gerrit Cole sidelined for the entire 2025 season.