This Will Warren adjustment could represent turning point he needs with Yankees

After a rocky introduction to the big leagues thus far, Will Warren has put together two gems in a row. The 25-year-old right-hander was ranked as the Yankees 10th-best prospect by MLB Pipeline at the beginning of the season. Starting pitching depth was supposed to be a strength for the Yankees in 2025, but spring training injuries to 2023 Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole and 2024 Rookie of the Year Luis Gil meant that Warren was a more permanent addition.

With his recent performances, he's looking to break out and prove that he's here to stay. And his next test will be against the Texas Rangers on Tuesday night.

Most Yankee fans will remember their unpleasant introduction to Warren. It was just a cup of coffee to end the 2024 season, but it was a bitter one. The Phillies walloped him in his debut and then he surrendered eight earned runs in four innings to a putrid Angels offense. Things didn't get much better, and he finished the season with a 10.32 ERA and 1.90 WHIP.

Unsurprisingly, he did not make the playoff roster. Of course, growing pains with young pitchers are incredibly common, and six starts isn't enough of sample size to know what kind of player he'll be. FanGraphs' 2025 Preseason Prospect Report had him listed as the 65th overall prospect in baseball and projected him to be a middle-of-the-rotation starter. It looked like Warren would be fine if he had more time to develop.

However, as injuries piled up, it became clear that Warren didn't have more time — it was now or never.

Will Warrens adjustments with 2025 Yankees have led to success

To start the season, Warren's overall been alright. Nobody is swooning over a 4.61 ERA through his first seven starts, but that's a far cry better than the aforementioned double-digit eyesore. Intrigue with Warren began in early May, when the Yankees traveled west to face the Athletics. These are not the A's of the past few seasons: Tyler Soderstrom, Brent Rooker, and current odds-on favorite Rookie of the Year Jacob Wilson are a genuine offensive core.

Warren rose to the challenge, throwing 7 1/3 innings, allowing only four hits, one earned run and one walk, and notched a career-high seven strikeouts. Five days later against the AL West-leading Seattle Mariners, he threw five innings, allowing four hits, two earned runs and one walk. He immediately broke his career high with nine strikeouts. While a two-game sample size is no more meaningful than the six game sample size from last year, Yankee fans should be excited to pop the hood and look deeper. Warren has made some adjustments that may bode well for his future.

Against two good offenses, Warren excelled by attacking the zone and throwing first-pitch strikes. Through both outings, he threw 30 first-pitch strikes and only 13 first-pitch balls. Through an 0-1 count, the opposition hit .087/.125/.087 with no walks and 11 strikeouts.

One of Warren's strengths even as a prospect has been his stuff. According to Statcast, four of his five pitches all have elite horizontal and vertical movement. Warren's primary problem has been the hard contact he allows; his 93.2 mph average exit velocity is in the first percentile across Major League pitching. That's literally as bad as it gets.

As it turns out, it's hard to be an effective pitcher when batters hit you harder than they do any other pitcher getting paid a Major League salary. His poor control early in the season is partially to blame for this hard contact; the more he put hitters in favorable counts, the easier it became for hitters to sit on his fastball and mash. Fortunately, one of the best ways to avoid surrendering hard contact to a hitter is to simply strike them out. From MLB.com's Film Room, here's all of those career-high nine strikeouts against the Mariners.

The key to Warren's success has been simple in theory. "Get ahead in the count," is some of the most basic advice a pitching coach can give, but Warren's elite movement is what makes him so effective in pitcher-friendly counts. A wicked breaking ball is invaluable in a two-strike count, but is a hindrance when you can't locate them or have to throw them when you're behind. After the game in Seattle, Warren said as much. When YES Network's Meredith Marakovits asked how he got so much swing and miss, he replied: "Getting ahead early, attacking the zone, and being confident in my stuff. We have the shape and grip of [the curveball], but it's about me having confidence and ripping it through the zone."

Warren is still young and relatively new to MLB hitting. Two games aren't enough to extrapolate and claim that he will have a 2.19 ERA and hold batters to a .178 average against for the rest of the season. However, he's changing his approach to make the most of his great stuff and the results are there. If he can sustain that with all the help at his disposal, Warren could be on his way to becoming a valuable starter for the Yankees.