Yankees' Luke Weaver quietly becoming an important piece in bullpen
Yankees pitcher Luke Weaver throws in the seventh inning against the Tigers at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. Credit: Corey Sipkin
Going into Monday’s off day, the Yankees were ninth in baseball in OPS. Gerrit Cole still hadn't thrown a single pitch in a regular-season game, Jonathan Loaisiga was lost for the year and Aaron Judge was only starting to heat up.
And still, they win.
After completing their sweep of the Tigers on Sunday, the Yankees were a season-high 10 games over .500 at 23-13, and though their success is no great mystery — Juan Soto, good starting pitching and a great bullpen — there are at least some secondary factors that go into the equation. And maybe surprisingly, one of them is Luke Weaver.
You’d be forgiven if you didn’t think much of the Yankees signing Weaver to a one-year deal in the offseason. They claimed him off waivers last September, and he was perfectly fine in three starts but otherwise finished the season with a ghastly 6.40 ERA and 1.58 WHIP.
But there’s a reason “Meet Matt Blake” is a meme, and it’s because something peculiar tends to happen when mediocre pitchers with sneaky good raw talent meet the Yankees' pitching coach. They’re suddenly not so mediocre anymore.
We saw it with Clay Holmes, though a lot of his progress since coming from the Pirates can be attributed to Driveline, the famous pitching lab that has dominated the sport in recent years. But we’ve also seen it with other pieces of what is now the best bullpen in baseball: Weaver, Ian Hamilton, Nick Burdi and Victor Gonzalez.
Weaver, though, is an interesting case study.
A starter throughout his career, he’s become the sort of high-leverage long relief man the Yankees lost when they traded Michael King in the package that brought Soto to the Bronx.
He’s athletic, with a highly repeatable delivery, and thanks to a few tweaks in spring training, he has, at times, looked unhittable. He had a 2.86 ERA, a 0.73 WHIP and 21 strikeouts in 22 innings, with only four walks.
Granted, he’s been a little fortunate — as evidenced by opponents' .185 batting average on balls put in play and 3.21 expected ERA. But that also points to hitters’ poor quality of contact, particularly against his fastball and disappearing changeup.
He has “a fastball that has a really good profile to it, an athleticism and delivery that lends itself to being able to have command,” Aaron Boone said. “We’ve seen an uptick, not only — because the profile of the fastball is really good — but we’ve also seen an uptick in velocity. He's been routinely 95, 6, 7, 8 with the four-seamer, and when you have the cutter and the change and command, it’s what we’ve seen. It’s been really good. It’s exciting to see where he's at and as he continues to develop in his craft and really take to this role in the pen that he got.”
Weaver's peripheral stats bear that out.
He’s throwing his fastball at a flatter angle, making it more difficult for batters to drive the ball — something that has helped cut down on the number of homers he allows, which has historically been an issue for him. Both the fastball and changeup have more vertical movement this year, and his chase percentage is up to 33.5%. That's in the 88th percentile in baseball, and up from 24.9% last year.
Or, as Weaver explains it: “Just being better at baseball, I guess.”
“I felt like I’ve really come into my own,” he added. “I felt like some things in spring training especially were coming together, some adjustments I made were pretty obvious. I’m getting comfortable and I’m feeling confident.”
The Yankees feel confident in him, too — highlighted by using him for 2 1/3 scoreless innings in their 5-3 win over the Tigers on Saturday.
“Luke’s been huge for us,” Boone said. “I feel like he’s thrown the ball incredibly well. His fastball has really ticked up in this role [and he’s] pounding the zone. He’s somebody we have a lot of confidence in . . . I’m excited about the way he’s thrown the ball and the role he’s carving out for himself.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
