Devin Williams Doing His Best to Sink Yankees Season

After Devin Williams blew the first two games of the series in Texas to extend the Yankees’ losing streak to five games, the Yankees salvaged the finale thanks to a gritty performance by David Bednar, who should obviously be the new closer. Will this be the game that gets this team turned around? Sure, we can hope, but I doubt it. Lets get to it. 

I’m going to share a viewing tip that I’ve been employing lately when it comes to watching the Yankees as they have crashed into the iceberg and begun the inexorable descent into the depths of the playoff chase, their 2025 season sinking before our eyes.

The moment Devin Williams enters a game, I turn the TV off. If it’s a night game, I go to bed. Day game, I just move on to whatever else I need to be doing, even if that something is pulling every one of my fingernails off with pliers because that has to be more enjoyable than watching that stiff blow games.

Doing this in the first two games of yet another losing series for the Yankees saved me a whole lot of aggravation as I did not watch his two meltdowns live. The morning after I watched the condensed game on the MLB app, only because I have to write this newsletter and I need to know exactly what went down.

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Monday, I watched the Yankees take a 5-4 lead into the ninth inning and that was all I needed to see. Nothing good was going to come from watching the ninth, so I went to bed, content to wake up the next day and check my phone to see what happened. If they had somehow hung on and won, great. But, if they blew it, which quite frankly is what I expected, then at least I didn’t have to sit through it. Suffice to say, I was not the least bit surprised when I saw the final score.

Tuesday, I wavered just a bit. With the game scoreless and Williams coming in for the eighth, I decided to see how the inning started. Once he walked two guys to load the bases it was good night Sal. I went upstairs, brushed my teeth, got into bed, but did peak at my phone to confirm what I figured had already happened and there it was, indeed, Williams blew it.

In case I haven’t been crystal clear enough, I can’t stand Aaron Boone because he is inept in every way. Well, check that: He spits sunflower seeds and blows bubbles like an ace, and he’s one of the greatest bullshit artists I’ve ever encountered. But when it comes to managing a baseball team - specifically our Yankees - he’s playing checkers while everyone else is playing chess.

In what universe would any other manager in MLB have brought Williams into Tuesday night’s scoreless game after what happened Monday, not to mention what has gone on for the past month when Williams has been trying his very best - and succeeding - to replicate the unbelievably horrible start to the season that he had? Who would have done that?

And what manager wouldn’t have run to the mound the moment Williams loaded the bases with one out and yanked him before he threw the match into the gas spill he had created? The answer to both questions is simple: Aaron Boone.

I swear, this dummy could hide his own Easter eggs and come back from the hunt with an empty basket. As someone once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them” and what Boone has shown all of us is that he doesn’t have a clue, but the only guy who doesn’t believe that is Hal Steinbrenner, and he’s the only guy who matters.

Boone was asked by reporters Wednesday whether he’s finally going to stop using Williams in big spots? Ha, what do you think?

“It’s similar to after getting off to a rough start, he rallied from that and really threw up a couple months of really consistent, outstanding work,” Boone said. “No reason to think he can’t do that again. He has the equipment to do it, and hopefully just a little rough patch here and we’ll get through that.

“I think wherever he’s pitching, if he’s pitching like he’s capable of, he’s got a chance to be massively successful. Part of it is now we have, after the deadline, bringing in a number of guys that have a ton of back-end, closing-type experience. We’ll try to get these guys into the best spots to be successful.”

Here’s my idea on Williams: Use him in games where the Yankees are winning or losing by five runs or more. That should be a safe spot for him. I think.

Aug. 4: Rangers 8, Yankees 5 (10)

➤ This is where the Yankees are in the 2025 season. The Rangers’ dud of a free agent signing, Joc Pederson, began this series batting .126. Going into Monday there were 335 players in MLB with at least 150 plate appearances and do you want to guess where Pederson’s average ranked? Well, I’ll tell you: 335th. That’s right, he’s the worst hitter in MLB, so naturally, he stepped up in the bottom of the ninth and crushed a useless Williams pitch for the tying home run. If that doesn’t say it all about the Yankees right now, and Williams in particular, nothing does.

➤ Luke Weaver, Camilo Doval and David Bednar all pitched a 1-2-3 inning to get the game to Williams in the ninth, and he retired the first man he faced, meaning the Yankees - going back to Max Fried’s last inning - had retired 13 straight. And then Pederson homered. Lovely.

➤ In the 10th, the Yankees continued their stunning incompetence in extra-inning road games. The free runner, Jasson Dominguez advanced to third, but after Anthony Volpe walked, Austin Wells, who is so horrible this year it’s beginning to defy belief, grounded into a double play. This was their sixth extra-inning road game, all losses, and the Yankees are now 1-for-27 at the plate and have scored one run, and that was due to a wild pitch.

➤ Boone turned to Jake Bird for the bottom half of the 10th and Bird shit the bed almost as spectacularly as he did in his Yankee debut last Friday. He got the first two outs, but then Boone made the decision to intentionally walk Wyatt Langford in order to go after Josh Jung. Jung flipped the proverbial bird at Boone and crushed a walk-off three-run homer. Bird was sent to Triple-A after the game, so that deadline acquisition lasted all of three appearances. Great.

➤ Before all that, Fried was not good. Four of his five innings were scoreless, but it was a struggle every step of the way. After the Yankees gave him a 3-0 lead he was putrid in a four-run second when he gave up five hits, a walk, and committed a ridiculous error on a pickoff throw to second. For the night, he allowed eight hits and three walks so yeah, it was not good. However, he left with a 5-4 lead because Giancarlo Stanton demolished a Jon Gray pitch for a 427-foot homer to dead center that never got higher than 15 feet and came off the bat at 115 mph. And in the end, it meant nothing.

What they said in Monday’s clubhouse

• Boone on if the losing is wearing on the team: “Yes. Doesn’t matter though. Weigh on us, stress - we’ve got to win. We know that. Nobody cares how stressful it is. That’s all just noise, excuses, whatever. We’ve got to go play better and we’ve got to go win. And we know that.”

• Boone on the bullpen: “We have really good guys down there, Devin included. We’ve got to be able to close out these games though. … We’ve got to get it tightened up. We all have to be better, starting tomorrow. There’s no time.”

• Williams: “The game’s got to end there with me. I’m trying to throw it down and away there, missed middle, and obviously he did what he did. This game and the last one (his blown save against the Rays), it was really one pitch that hurt me. But that’s the difference between winning and losing sometimes, and I can’t let that happen. Things haven’t been going well (for the team) for a while. I think everyone’s well aware of that. I would say I’m trying my best. Sometimes that leads to the opposite outcome that you’re trying to achieve. But at the end of the day, you got to get it done.”

Aug. 5: Rangers 2, Yankees 0

➤ Wow, this was an absolute domination by Texas starter Nathan Eovaldi. The Yankees looked like they were using toothpicks as bats against this guy as he allowed one hit (a double by Volpe in the third inning) and no walks across eight scoreless innings. This was a man against a bunch of little boys, including Aaron Judge who returned to the lineup and went 0-for-3 with two whiffs as the DH, meaning Stanton, the one guy who has been hitting pretty steadily, was a bench player.

➤ For the Yankees, Will Warren gave up three hits and three walks and had a runner in scoring position in four of his five innings, but he found a way to get out of every jam. Doval and Weaver kept the game scoreless through seven, and then it was time for the nightly Williams puke-a-thon. Adolis Garcia doubled with one out and Pederson walked, meaning that bum - the guy who was hitting .126 when the Yankees came to town - had reached base in all four of his plate appearances in this game.

➤ Right there, Boone should have yanked Williams because he’d pitched to the required three men. Instead he watched him walk Langford to load the bases, so again, he should have pulled him but still the dipshit manager stayed put, blowing his bubbles. And then to the surprise of no one, Rowdy Tellez - who looks like he should be playing slow pitch softball with a body like that - won a 10-pitch at bat with a two-run single. Ballgame. Oh, but the folly continued. Williams pitched to one more batter and got him out, and only then did Boone decide to make the move to Mark Leiter, fresh off the injured list, who got the last out. Unbelievable.

➤ Williams gave up 26 earned runs from 2022-2024 with the Brewers when he was one of the best relievers in MLB. He has now become one of the worst as he has given up 26 with the Yankees and there’s still nearly two months left in the season. This was the seventh time in his last 13 outings he’s given up at least one earned run, including four straight.

➤ This made 19 losses in their last 24 road games, their worst stretch since 1991.

What they said in Tuesday’s clubhouse

• Boone on going with Williams again: “We got to piece it together Once Will goes (only) five, we’re set up there. Liked him in that middle with the handful of those righties and obviously just couldn’t finish it off. I was going to maybe go with Bednar in a four-out (save) situation, but just kind of shorten the game a little bit. We don’t have a lot left down there, and Leiter being in a situation where he obviously hasn’t pitched in a while, so if I could get it to a four-out scenario, I was going to do it. I thought Devin could still get some swing and miss there, but obviously didn’t.”

• Williams: “I mean, I don’t really know what to say at this point,” Williams said. “Continue to work, keep trying to execute and help the team any way that I can.”

• Judge on Eovaldi: “He uses all his pitches, works all parts of the zone, does a good job throwing strikes with all pitches. So you really got to be disciplined when you’re facing a guy like that. He made some tough pitches that kept us off the bases for quite a bit. Just couldn’t get anything going against him.”

Aug. 6: Yankees 3, Rangers 2

➤ Hey, they won! They won! They had to survive another heart-stopping ninth inning, but by golly, Boone’s bums won a game. The five-game losing streak died, and thus they clinched the season series 4-2 over the Rangers so if these teams were to end tied in the wildcard race, the Yankees would own the tiebreaker. Do I expect that to even matter? No, because I really can’t see this team making the postseason, but we still have 47 games to figure that out.

➤ Carlos Rodon wasn’t very good. He managed only five innings because once again he had command problems with four walks and six hits allowed. That makes 15 walks in his last 20 innings across his last four starts. He and Fried can’t be going five innings; they have to give the Yankees more length than they have recently because the bullpen is so damn worn out and fragile.

➤ However, when he really got into trouble in the third and fifth, Rodon limited the damage to one run in each inning. From there, really good work from Leiter to inherit a Rodon walk leading off the sixth and getting an inning-ending double play. And then Tim Hill and Yerry De Los Santos got two outs apiece which led to Bednar entering with one out in the eighth and really bailing the Yankees out.

➤ Bednar struck out the final two men in the eighth and the first two in the ninth, but this being the Yankees, of course it couldn’t be that easy. He got screwed on a 3-2 pitch which should have been a game-ending strikeout against dangerous Corey Seager but instead became a walk, and Marcus Semien singled so it was first and second. Boone came out to pull the tiring Bednar in favor of Doval, but Bednar talked his way into staying in the game, and he battled Garcia for seven pitches before striking him out to end it.

➤ Bednar threw 42 pitches, the most he’s thrown since June 15, 2022. And he became the first Yankee to record five outs, all via a strikeout, in a save since Goose Gossage on May 14, 1982 at Oakland.

➤ The Yankees knocked Rangers starter Jack Leiter out with a two-run fourth to take the lead. Cody Bellinger and Dominguez walked and Volpe delivered an RBI single. Dominguez then stole third and came home when Kyle Higashioka threw the ball into left. It figures that an ex-Yankee made the Rangers only error of the series.

➤ The Rangers tied it in the fifth on a bases-loaded sac fly by Semien, but the Yankees scored the winning run in the seventh. Boone finally pushed the right button as he sent Paul Goldschmidt in to pinch hit for the useless Wells, and Goldy homered off Robert Garcia. They could have tacked on a couple more but Jazz Chisholm flied out with the bases loaded.

What they said in Wednesday’s clubhouse

• Boone on his talk with Bednar: “I said, ‘I’m going to take you out.’ He gave me a look like, ‘No you’re not.’ So I said, ‘You sure?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, let’s go, I got this guy.’ That’s a dawg effort right there.”

• Boone on the win: “It’s one game. We gotta dig ourselves out here, but as I’ve said, it’s there for us. I’m steadfast and I believe we have a great run in us. I believe in those guys in the room, but as we’ve been saying, we’ve got to go do it. This is just one win.”

• Bednar: “I honestly didn’t even see him coming. I was just kind of getting my mind right to face Garcia. I told him I wanted him. He agreed. I just wanted to bear down and get that last one. That was huge for him to allow me an opportunity to do that and I’m glad I was able to come through. It was a great team win all around. Good to get the ball rolling in the right direction.”

Oh, great, after a day off, now the god damn Astros are coming to Yankee Stadium for three games. Just what the Yankees need is their longtime nemesis swooping into town having just won two of three from the same Marlins who swept the Yankees last weekend. Houston is 64-51 and leads the Mariners by two games in the AL West while the Rangers are now just 4.5 back.

Somehow, the Astros have kept winning despite all the talent they’ve seen leave the last few years, though now one of those former stars from the World Series years, Carlos Correa, is back. They’re also in first place even though slugger Yordan Alvarez has played only 29 games and is still sidelined.

Here are some of the top Astros to watch:

➤ LF Jose Altuve: The little gnat just keeps raking as he’s hitting .280 and he’s tied for the team lead with 19 homers and has also switched positions.

➤ 1B Christian Walker: Even though the guy I wanted the Yankees to sign to play first base has struggled a bit with Houston, he still leads the team with 61 RBI despite a .700 OPS.

➤ SS Jeremy Pena: In the midst of a magnificent season slashing .324/.379/.494 with a team-best .873 OPS.

➤ C-DH Yainer Diaz: He has shared the catching with Victor Caratini and he has 16 homers and 50 RBI.

➤ RP Josh Hader: Leads the NL with 28 saves and has a 2.13 ERA and 0.849 WHIP, exactly what the Yankees would love to have in a closer.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

• Friday, 7:05, Apple-TV: Cam Schlittler (4.58 ERA) vs. Hunter Brown (2.47 ERA) an All-Star who has been a stud all season with a 0.985 WHIP and 10.6 strikeouts per nine innings.

• Saturday: 2:05, YES: Luis Gil (13.50) vs. Framber Valdez (2.83), a dominant lefty who will give the Yankees fits like he always does. He has a 1.121 WHIP and averages 9.3 strikeouts per nine.

• Sunday: 1:35, YES: Max Fried (2.78) vs. TBD.