The Yankees continue to lean almost exclusively on their pitching staff to keep them in games, the offense managing two or fewer runs in six of their last seven games. It doesn’t feel like a sustainable approach, but for now it’s what they’ve got while they await the returns of Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, and Giancarlo Stanton from injury. Indeed, perhaps the best pitching performance of the last week belongs to Ryan Weathers, who completed six scoreless innings against the Cardinals to hand them their only win in that series.
We join Weathers in the sixth inning of the middle game against the Cardinals on Tuesday. His performance thus far continues a fascinating trend where the lefty seemingly pitches better the less run support he receives. Solo home runs by Jazz Chisholm Jr. and George Lombard Jr. on his MLB debut have staked Weathers to a 2-0 lead. However, he is facing the sternest test of this outing — runners on the corners with two outs following a JJ Wetherholt walk and Iván Herrera single with two outs as the top of the order faces Weathers for the third time.
Despite a pitch count of just 80, you get a sense that José Fermín will be the last batter Weathers faces — something Aaron Boone confirmed in his post game presser as he and Matt Blake perceived fatigue beginning to set in. To this point, Fermín has grounded out twice, Weathers attacking the righty with sinkers, changeups, and sliders, and there is no deviation in course as the Yankees lefty starts this encounter with a first-pitch sinker.
Weathers’ front shoulder opens a fraction early, causing him to sail this sinker well wide of the strike zone away. The result is a pretty straightforward take from Fermín against a pitch that never looked like a strike.
After Fermín spat on that outside sinker, a sneaky choice from Weathers would be a get-me-over backdoor sweeper for a called strike to get back into the count as it should look just like that sinker that missed out of the hand.
You can see how effective it is to follow a sinker called as a ball away with a backdoor sweeper. It looks just like the previous pitch, causing Fermín to give up on it early as it starts in the opposite batter’s box, only for its glove side movement to carry it back into the zone. It’s this type of sequencing that can cause a hitter to take a pitch that ends up pretty much down the middle.
Now that Weathers has shown Fermín a pitch that starts away before breaking back into the zone, it makes sense to follow it with a pitch away that breaks in the opposite direction — in this case the changeup.
Weathers executes an absolute beauty of a changeup dotted right on the corner low and away. You can see how much it looks like the previous sweeper that was called a strike, which explains why Fermín fouls this pitch to the opposite field, his swing expecting something that will break toward him resulting in the bat head staying too far inside a pitch that breaks away for him to barrel it.
It’s pretty obvious that Weathers is going to go away away away for the entire AB. Playing off of Fermín’s take on the first sweeper he threw for a called strike, Weathers tries to achieve the same result with another backdoor sweeper.
This time, Fermín is ready for the pitch. He too likely realized that Weathers is targeting the outer half of the strike zone, which means that a pitch that starts way outside is likely to be a backdoor breaker. Fermín correctly diagnoses that pitch out of Weathers’ hand and pulls the ball viciously down the third base line just foul. Despite the desired result with the first sweeper he threw, it’s a pretty dangerous pitch to throw multiple times against a righty. The sweeper suffers a significant platoon disadvantage against opposite-handed batters on account of the lift it generates relative to other breaking balls, and indeed you can see the way this sweeper enters the hitting zone pretty flat, which results in a pitch that breaks right into the nitro zone of a right-handed hitter.
Thankfully, Weathers abandons the pitch for the rest of the AB as he likely realizes that he dodged a bullet with Fermín not able to keep that batted ball fair. He returns to his trusty changeup — a much safer pitch to throw to a righty given that it breaks away from and not toward the barrel when employing an outer-half approach.
Unfortunately for Weathers, he opens his front side too early just like the first pitch sinker he threw, causing this changeup to sail way wide arm-side. You might think this was a non-competitive pitch given how far away it landed from the strike zone, but you can see how Fermín was initially tempted to chase away thanks to Weathers sequencing this changeup off the backdoor sweeper that preceded it.
With the sixth pitch, Weathers chooses to throw his first slider of the AB. Austin Wells sets an initial central aiming point, which should result in a back-foot slider given the pitch’s movement down and in.
Instead, Weathers nails that initial target that Wells flashes with his glove — an absolute cookie of a hanging slider right down the middle that he is lucky Fermín fails to punish. That’s three breaking balls — two sweepers and a slider — that Weathers leaves central, which should be enough to convince him to not throw another.
So far, the pitch that Weathers looks most likely to get Fermín to chase out of the zone is the changeup. If he can replicate his execution of the first one he threw, he should be able to end the inning with a strikeout or at least some weak contact.
This is now the third time that Weathers is unable to finish an arm-side breaking pitch to the outer half as it is now patently obvious that he has run out of steam and does not have the stamina to keep that front shoulder closed long enough to set his throwing arm down the correct path. Now, it’s just a matter of whether he can survive this AB as really only one of the seven pitches so far has been executed to its spot.
After six straight off-speed pitches, Weathers must feel that he can gas a heater by Fermín, his hand also forced a bit by Fermín battling back to work the count full and not wanting to load the bases for St Louis’ cleanup hitter.
Instead of commanding this sinker to the corner, Weathers leaves it up and catches more of the plate than you would like. This allows Fermín to barrel the pitch as he is absolutely ready to hit the fastball despite the steady diet of off-speed. It’s the first pitch Weathers has thrown that has an initial trajectory toward the inner half of the zone, which combined with the clear approach to pitch Fermín away makes it pretty obvious this is a fastball out of the hand. Luckily for Weathers and the Yankees, Fermín almost hits this ball too well, allowing it to hang up in the air long enough for Heliot Ramos to glove the liner for the final out, stranding runners on the corners as Weathers completes six shutout.
Here’s the full sequence:
Boone clearly made the right call to end Weathers’ night there at 88 pitches given the faltering command against the final three batters he faced. All the same, it represents yet another strong start for the Yankees’ southpaw, who has now allowed just one earned run in his last 20.1 innings pitched. As I hypothesized when writing about Weathers’ choice of fastball and as my colleague Andrés further investigated yesterday, Weathers’ U-turn comes courtesy of a shift in pitch usage, the lefty exchanging out many of his four-seamers for sinkers while also increasing deployment of the changeup and slider to mitigate the home run woes of the first half of his season.
This turnaround in form comes at just the right time for Weathers — he started his season off strong before encountering a serious sticky patch in May and early June, finding his footing as the Yankees crystalize their rotation plans with Carlos Rodón nearing a return from left elbow inflammation. Conversely, Will Warren has a 5.44 ERA in his last ten starts while Weathers owns a 2.89 ERA in his last nine over the same timeframe. At this point, it is clear who deserves to remain in the rotation vs. who has earned a demotion to the bullpen.
COVERS INTEL: Can Logan Gilbert handle the Rays? Not only do Yandy Diaz and Junior Caminero have his number, but afer 59 plate appearances against the right-hander, 
(@Coach_Yac) 
