The bullpen for the New York Yankees certainly had its ups and downs through the 2025 regular season. When it came to the starting rotation, they performed about as well as manager Aaron Boone or any of the Yankees faithful could have asked for. They finished eighth in MLB in fWAR and fourth in ERA. However, the bullpen was on the opposite side of the spectrum.<\/p>\n
Through the 162-game regular season, the Yankees\u2019 bullpen finished 21st in fWAR and 23rd in ERA, and it wasn\u2019t strange to see headlines that the bullpen had blown another game.<\/p>\n
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While not everyone in the bullpen was equally at fault for losing the team games, there were, of course, players who were common denominators, including a pitcher who just signed with the crosstown rival New York Mets: Devin Williams.<\/p>\n
2025 Statistics:\u00a0<\/strong>67 games pitched, 62.0 IP, 4-6, 4.79 ERA (85 ERA+), 2.68 FIP, 2.95 xFIP, 34.7% K%, 9.7% BB%, 1.13 WHIP, 1.4 fWAR<\/p>\n 2026 FanGraphs Depths Charts Projections:\u00a0<\/strong>63 games played, 63.0 IP, 3-3, 3.24 ERA, 3.28 FIP, 30.0% K%, 10.3% BB%, 1.21 WHIP, 0.8 fWAR<\/p>\n Now hear me out. None of this is meant to detract from the, let\u2019s face it, dreadful season Williams had on the mound in his first season in pinstripes. In his first month, he finished with a 9.00 ERA. In July, he finished with a 5.73 ERA. His away ERA was 5.93. Simply put, Williams was bad, and the most frustrating part about all of it was that Boone continued to force the issue and put him in high-leverage spots. If the Yankees needed to get outs from the bullpen, Williams seemed to be called upon by the Yankees to try to convert on the opportunity even when he was at the height of his struggles.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n But if the Yankees were to make the right decisions with his deployment and really get a grasp on what went wrong last season (going from a sub-2.00 ERA pitcher to a 4.79 ERA pitcher doesn\u2019t just happen out of thin air, without a reason), then it could have been possible to make up for lost time and give it another shot.<\/p>\n Williams, despite the issues in the \u201cruns against\u201d department, still had some solid peripheral numbers. He finished with a 1.4 fWAR, the fourth highest among Yankee pitchers and highest among the team\u2019s relievers. He also finished around or above the 95th percentile in plenty of different categories, including expected batting average, whiff rate, chase rate, and strikeout rate.<\/p>\n With his primary two-pitch arsenal \u2014 a changeup and a four-seam fastball \u2014 still looking basically as it had in 2024, there were plenty of pieces of Williams\u2019 game that were worth looking into for the Yankees. Not all of it was as bad as the surface numbers might point to. There is reason to believe that Williams can and will be an effective pitcher again. The Yankees seemed to agree at least to an extent, as they were reportedly interested in a reunion with Williams, despite his miserable introduction to the Bronx.<\/p>\n The numbers point to more good things happening in the future than bad things. But now that he\u2019s off the market, the question will be, can another coaching staff bring the best out of him again? The version from the Brewers, who won the Rookie of the Year award in 2020, is a multiple-time All-Star and even finished top 20 in MVP voting in 2023. The Yankees won\u2019t get a second chance to uncover that dominant reliever, and they\u2019ll watch to see if their crosstown rivals are able to get Williams back to his peak with Milwaukee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the second year in a row, a Yankee is one-and-done in the Bronx and Queens-bound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":127776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[307,1879,329,3857,1392,17,1198],"class_list":["post-127774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","tag-aaron-boone","tag-brewers","tag-devin-williams","tag-era","tag-milwaukee","tag-new-york-mets","tag-yankees"],"yoast_head":"\n