Will Warren May Be Finding His Groove

The Yankees rallied Wednesday to beat the Mariners and win another series, and while Aaron Judge hit the go-ahead, game-winning home run, Will Warren was the player who impressed me with the way he is starting to pitch like a major leaguer. Maybe it’s fleeting success, but maybe it’s not. Lets get to it. 

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The first West Coast trip of the season went very well as the Yankees won both series, taking two of three from both the A’s and Mariners.

And of all the good things that happened out there - offset somewhat by the one very bad thing, the broken ankle suffered by Oswaldo Cabrera Monday night - I’d have to say my favorite development was the sudden emergence of Will Warren.

The kid looked completely incapable of pitching at the major league level when he came up last season and delivered a disgusting 10.32 ERA in six appearances. And then when forced into the rotation this year because of the injuries to Gerrit Cole and Luis Gil, Warren’s first seven starts were nearly as bad as the Yankees lost five of the games and his ERA was 5.65.

But then last week in Sacramento - in a minor league park which seemed appropriate - he found success as he threw 7.1 innings of one-run ball with seven strikeouts. Wednesday in Seattle, not a minor league park by any stretch at, he went five innings and kept the Yankees in it by striking out a career-high nine and allowing just two runs in the third, both of which should have been unearned but weren’t because the official scorer in Seattle changed his original decision of an obvious error on DJ LeMahieu to a hit.

He left trailing 2-0 because the Yankees offense was doing nothing against Mariners starter Luis Castillo, just like it had done nothing Tuesday against Bryan Woo, but Warren did his job and eventually his teammates took him off the hook for the loss.

“Just getting ahead early, attacking the zone, being confident in my stuff,” said Warren, who added that his curveball has been better lately and that has really helped. “We’ve worked hard the last couple weeks on that. I think it’s come along nicely. I had a good feel for it today and just sticking with it. … We have the shape, we got the grip, it’s more me having confidence in it and ripping it through the zone.”

If nothing else, the rotation doesn’t look nearly as fragile as it did a couple weeks ago when it was almost impossible to win in the starts made by Warren and the since-released Carlos Carrasco. And now you add Ryan Yarbrough as an occasional starting option and dare I say that maybe the Yankees can hang in there and survive until Gil gets back sometime maybe in late June.

Then again, this was the A’s and Mariners. The Mets will be an entirely different challenge this weekend, though at least the Yankees will have their front three for the Subway Series - Carlos Rodon, Clarke Schmidt and then Max Fried for the ESPN night game Sunday.

“That’s what I love to see,” Aaron Judge said of Warren. “He had the great outing for us in (Sacramento). Impressive, just pounding the strike zone. Even here, same thing. I feel like his curveball and sweeper were really on today. Good feel for them, they looked really sharp. Just impressive. The poise out there, the confidence. I know he went down, they got those two runs early, but he battled for us and gave us some length and turned it over to the great bullpen we got.”

May 12: Yankees 11, Mariners 5

➤ This was all going so well, and then right around midnight here on the East coast, an impressive Yankees victory felt a little meaningless when Cabrera suffered a serious ankle injury while scoring on a ninth-inning Judge sacrifice fly. After writhing in pain, he was eventually loaded onto a stretcher with an air cast and loaded into an ambulance which carried him out of T-Mobile Park and to a local hospital.

➤ Cabrera, hustling like he always does even though the Yankees were up five runs, had to avoid Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh and a possible tag and he wound up running past the plate, but when he slammed on the brakes to scramble back to touch home, his ankle rolled the wrong way. Brutal. He’s going to be out quite a while, but the timing was certainly weird because Tuesday, LeMahieu was activated from the injured list to immediately fill his roster spot. That also saved either Pablo Reyes or Jorbit Vivas from being sent away.

➤ Before that unfortunate piece of business, the Yankees extended Seattle’s losing streak to four thanks to a strong outing from Schmidt and yet another explosive inning which has become a thing for the Yankees lately. They scored six times in the fifth to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 7-2 lead. In that inning, Trent Grisham hit his second solo homer of the night, and that was followed in succession by a Judge single, a Ben Rice double, and RBI singles by Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger. Anthony Volpe lined out, and then Austin Wells drilled a three-run homer to dead center, almost the same place both of Grisham’s homers flew out.

➤ Wells later had a sacrifice fly and Volpe hit a two-run homer in the ninth before Judge’s sacrifice fly on the play Cabrera was injured. The Yankees finished with 15 hits against Mariners starter Emerson Hancock and three relievers.

➤ This was the ninth time the Yankees have scored at least 10 runs, most in MLB, and their 17 sac flies through Monday were second-most in MLB, and that speaks to this team’s improved ability to get runners home from third base without home runs.

➤ Schmidt gave up solo homers to Julio Rodriguez in the first and Jorge Polanco in the third, but after that he retired 11 men in a row before a leadoff Randy Arozarena double in the seventh ended his night. He gave up three runs on three hits and two walks with six strikeouts to get his first win.

What they said in Monday’s clubhouse

• Aaron Boone on Cabrera: “I think everyone understands it was a pretty serious situation. Just praying for our guy Cabby tonight and hoping for the best, and trusting he’s in good hands as he goes through the night here. Obviously, a great game in a lot of ways, but a lot of guys feeling for their teammate, who is the best of the best of them. It’s definitely one of those unfortunate things that pops up that lends perspective to what we’re doing. We’re playing a game. You get so consumed with it all the time and the ups and downs of it, and something like that happens for someone you feel so good about. … It smacks you with that perspective that we try to talk about and have all the time. At the end of the day, it’s a game.”

• Judge on Cabrera: “For him to get hurt on a play like that, it speaks tons to what type of guy he is. It’s a game where we’ve got a little bit of a lead, and he’s still fighting to the very last out. Everyone in here feels terrible, just because we know how much he works, how hard he works, how much he loves and cares about everybody in this room, the way he would treat every game, and every day he got to be here as such a blessing. He loves being a Yankee; he wears this jersey with pride. This is a tough one, especially for a guy who’s grinded his whole life and finally got the opportunity to be our everyday guy and has been excelling at it.”

May 13: Mariners 2, Yankees 1 (11)

➤ What a frustrating night this was. The Yankees were extremely lucky to have even gotten to extra innings after so much futility on offense, and then once they extended the game with an unearned run in the ninth, they continued to be a terrible team in extra innings as they failed in both the 10th and 11th innings to get the free runner home and it cost them the game.

➤ In the 10th, LeMahieu made his season debut by striking out as a pinch hitter, Grisham whiffed and after Judge was intentionally walked, Bellinger flied out. In the 11th, Reyes grounded out and the free runner, Bellinger, went to third where he stayed as Wells popped out, Volpe walked and Jasson Dominguez grounded out. That finished off a night where the Yankees went 0-for-14 with runners in scoring position, their worst since going 0-for-14 against the Twins on July 6, 1990.

➤ Fried did not have his best stuff and he lasted just five innings and 91 pitches. But because he’s so good, he allowed only one run on four hits and two walks, that in the fourth when Rodriguez singled and raced all the way around on Raleigh’s double to center.

➤ Outstanding work by the bullpen as Fernando Cruz, Mark Leiter, Luke Weaver and Devin Williams combined for five perfect innings, 15 straight men retired, and Williams did it in the 10th and stranded the Mariners’ free runner. But then Tim Hill stunk in the 11th as he threw three pitches and two were hit for singles by Ben Williams and JP Crawford who walked it off.

➤ Woo dominated the Yankees for 6.1 scoreless innings and then in that seventh, Wells doubled, Volpe walked, and a double steal put them on second and third but reliever Gabe Speier struck out Dominguez and Peraza to get out of it. Peraza started at third base with Cabrera out and he made a couple excellent defensive plays, but he continues to be useless at the plate as he went 0-for-4 to drop his average to .189.

➤ The Yankees tied it in the ninth against Mariners closer Andres Munoz who had not allowed an earned run all season, and still hasn’t. Goldschmidt was hit by a pitch and then stole second. Reyes pinch ran and took third on a Wells groundout, and he scored when Volpe hit a grounder to first and Dylan Moore threw it away trying to nail Reyes at the plate. Normally, I hate the contact play, but this time it worked. Volpe wound up on second, but Dominguez and Peraza again failed in a big spot. After Dominguez was called out on a terrible called third strike, Boone lost his mind and got tossed, but he was right, it was a brutal call, one of many from that umpire.

➤ The Yankees are now 1-3 in extra innings this year, and since 2020 when the free runner was instituted, they are now a gruesome 12-25 in road extra inning games, the worst record in MLB. This year, they are also just 5-9 in one-run games, and 8-14 in games decided by two or fewer runs.

What they said in Tuesday’s clubhouse

• Boone: “When you don’t score in those extra innings, it puts the home team at a real advantage so we’re kind of up against it there. We threw the ball really well tonight, we just didn’t get the big hit with runners in scoring position. … We just couldn’t cash in on those chances we had.”

• Fried on his command issues: “I think it was just a mix of everything. Probably command, and then also facing a team that had a really good approach. It happens. They put together some really good at-bats and drove my pitch count up, especially after a really quick first. Definitely had to make pitches and dig deep and got bailed out by some really great defense. They were in it every pitch, just being able to foul off a lot. They were on time, and they were definitely ready for what I was throwing. Sometimes that’s the way the game shakes out.”

May 14: Yankees 3, Mariners 2

➤ Warren was good and the bullpen was even better as Tyler Matzek, Ian Hamilton, Cruz and Weaver handled the final four innings flawlessly - no runs on two hits and a walk. That was a hell of a job by Weaver after he recorded six outs the night before to strike out the side on 15 pitches to end it.

➤ Rodriguez had been doing basically nothing this season for the Mariners, but he picked this series to remember that he’s allegedly a star. After he homered Monday, he started this game by robbing Grisham of a leadoff homer in the first, then cranked a two-run double in the third for an early 2-0 lead.

➤ The Yankees’ comeback began in the sixth. Volpe, who stranded men at second and third in the first inning, hit a two-out double and on the next pitch from Luis Castillo - who to that point had silenced the Yankees - Dominguez ripped an RBI double to right. The Yankees were 5-for-33 in the series with runners in scoring position, but that fifth hit was a clutch one in that spot. And then Goldschmidt’s pinch-hit homer tied it in the seventh and Judge’s 444-foot homer in the eighth won it. It was his 15th of the year and seven of them have given the Yankees the lead while they were trailing or tied. And since 2021, Judge has 19 RBI in the eighth inning or later that gave his team a lead, the most in MLB over that span.

➤ Hey, LeMahieu made his first start at second base and while he made a bad play in the third (originally scored an error, which it was, then stupidly changed to a hit for some reason) he helped turn an excellent double play in the eighth, and then stroked a single up the middle in the ninth for his first hit.

➤ If you take Hill’s two appearances out of the mix - during which he allowed three runs including the loser on Tuesday - the rest of the Yankees’ bullpen pitched 11.1 innings of scoreless relief in the series. All told, the Yankees gave up only nine runs.

➤ It was interesting that Vivas started at third base over Peraza. Vivas has been primarily a second baseman but with Cabrera and Jazz Chisholm out, LeMahieu back, Reyes and Peraza not hitting, the Yankees have to figure something out and they’re trying different options.

What they said in Wednesday’s clubhouse

• Judge on his winning homer after a couple poor early at bats: “You start to hone in on which ones not to swing at, which I swung at a lot in the other batter’s box. It’s really just about being patient and getting back to what we need to focus on, what we need to do. Happy we were able to come away with the win there.”

• Warren on Judge: “Every time he comes up, I think he’s going to hit a home run. It’s crazy, but he puts in the hard work every day, shows up the same guy every day and I think that’s why he gets the results he does.”

• Goldschmidt on fitting in: “Coming here, it’s a little bit of a different role. I’ve just tried to embrace that and was excited for something new. … It’s fun to have those opportunities. If you’re pinch hitting or coming in on defense, it means we’re probably in a winning situation or a tie game and have a chance to help us win.”

Well, here we go. The series that every baseball fan in New York circled on the calendar the moment Juan Soto shunned the Yankees over a measly $5 million and signed his $765 million contract with the Mets. Three games this weekend and Yankee Stadium will be electric as the first half of the Subway Series is played. And this year, it’s a six-game set with three more to be played at Citi Field July 4-6.

The Mets lost to lowly Pittsburgh Wednesday night, but they are 28-16 and lead the NL East by 2.5 games over the Phillies. The Yankees are now 25-18 and lead the Blue Jays by 3.5 and the Red Sox by 4 in the AL East.

Here are some of Mets top players to watch

➤ RF Juan Soto: He started pretty sluggishly for the Mets as he ended April hitting .241 with just three homers, but he has picked it up in May and now has eight homers, 20 RBI and an .845 OPS.

➤ 1B Pete Alonso: Right now he might be the frontrunner for NL MVP. He’s hitting .311 with a 1.004 OPS and he leads the NL with 15 doubles and 36 RBI.

➤ SS Francisco Lindor: He has become the heart and soul of the team. He leads the NL with 52 hits, and has nine homers, 26 RBI and a .364 on-base.

➤ LF Brandon Nimmo: Another heart and soul player who has 26 RBI, though he’s struggling with a .286 on base.

➤ RP’s Huascar Brazoban and Reid Garrett: These two set-up men have combined to pitch 42 innings and they allowed five earned runs in front of closer Edwin Diaz.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

• Friday, 7:05, YES: Carlos Rodon (3.29 ERA) vs. Tylor Megill (3.10) who has been a big surprise and leads the Mets rotation with 11.5 strikeouts per nine.

• Saturday, 1:05, YES: Clarke Schmidt (4.73) vs Griffin Canning (2.36) who has been a revelation. He had a 4.78 career ERA in five seasons for the Angels, signed with the Mets as a free agent and he’s given up one or zero runs in six of his first eight starts.

• Sunday, 7:10, ESPN: Max Fried (1.11) vs. David Peterson (3.05) who has been good, but he does have a sloppy 1.353 WHIP meaning there’s been traffic on the bases.