Yanks Mag: The Ultimate Relief

A young fan lucky enough to have a field pass was camped out near the Yankees’ home dugout at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Fla., this past spring. As the teenager watched a group of players commence a workout, Brent Headrick walked over to him.

Without hesitation, the relief pitcher offered a fist bump and a few kind words.

“How’s it going?” the surprised young man responded.

The exchange was brief, but it still resonated with the fan. Maybe the way that Headrick went out of his way to engage the teenager in the tan shirt was what created a lasting memory, one that he has surely shared with fellow Yankees fans.

Or maybe it was simpler than that; just a quiet moment between two people. No autograph requests, no photos, just a show of mutual respect.

At that time, Headrick didn’t have the cache of some of his superstar teammates, certainly not yet. Unlike Aaron Judge, the relief pitcher’s mere presence didn’t create a buzz. But on that humid morning, Headrick made a lasting impression just by being himself.

What no one familiar with Headrick’s career numbers could have predicted -- except for maybe Headrick, himself -- was just how dominant the pitcher would become over the next seven months.

One season after being designated for assignment -- a formal term for being cut from a team’s 40-man roster -- by the Minnesota Twins in February 2025, Headrick embarked on one of the most prolific campaigns by a Yankees relief pitcher in recent memory. The left-hander posted a 2.18 ERA in 81 appearances this season, both of which placed him among the league leaders. The 28-year-old’s 65 scoreless appearances led all big leaguers and put him within two of the team record established by Mariano Rivera and Tom Gordon in 2004.

“The most important thing for me has been just focusing on today,” Headrick said during an interview at Yankee Stadium in early September. “What happened yesterday doesn’t matter any more. I am focused on being the best version of myself today, and when I wake up tomorrow, I’m going to do the same thing. That mentality has helped me keep it very simple this season.”

With one injury-shortened season in the Yankees organization under his belt, Headrick was not thinking about breaking any records in early March. Instead, he was trying to maintain the progress he began to make last season when he split time between Triple-A and the Majors.

“Honestly, my goal was just to make the team, and that was no different from how I felt when I got to Tampa at the beginning of 2025,” Headrick said. “I don’t like to put too many numbers on goals because I never want to create limits. I’m especially happy that I didn’t do that going into this season. I don’t know what I’m capable of, so I just have the mentality of going out there and trusting the process. As soon as I made the team this year, I told myself to go after it for the full season and just see what happens.”

Beginning with the Yankees’ Opening Night win in San Francisco, Headrick has not only gone after it, but he has become one of manager Aaron Boone’s most trusted and consistent relievers. After logging just three big league innings with the Twins in 2024 and 23 innings with the Yankees in 2025, Headrick blew past his previous career high of 25 2/3 innings, set in 2023, to surpass the 75-inning mark.

It started with a scoreless eighth in a blowout victory at the start of this season. That led to three more scoreless appearances before the calendar even turned to April. Headrick remained effective in the season’s first full month, allowing just three earned runs in 13 April appearances. As the season progressed and Headrick continued to stack one good outing on top of another, Boone began to call on him in more high-leverage spots. And despite not having much experience pitching with big league games on the line, Headrick proved that he was capable of doing the job.

“When I first started getting into those high-leverage situations, the first one or two, it was more stressful because I hadn’t been in that situation before,” he said. “But once you keep doing it over and over again, it becomes normal. I’m just going out there and doing my job, and I take pride in the fact that, no matter what the situation is, I’m consistently throwing the ball the same way.

“For a little while, I pitched in situations where we were down by eight or 10 or up by eight or 10 and everywhere in between. Now that I’m in high-leverage situations, nothing has changed for me. I have the same mindset, and it’s gotten more normal. I still get the same nerves when I’m in the bullpen, but the second I hit the outfield grass when I’m running in, it all goes away and I realize that I’m just playing baseball.”

En route to compiling more than 50 scoreless outings in his team’s first 120 games, Headrick impressed the Yankees’ coaching staff with a level of dependability that contributed mightily to the team’s winning record. With a starting rotation featuring elite competitors in Cam Schlittler, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Max Fried and Will Warren, and with closer David Bednar putting together another lockdown season, Headrick became a big part of the bridge that consistently kept opponents from scoring in the late innings. Whether it was during a 22-appearance stretch from mid-May through early July when Headrick allowed just one earned run, or the 13 outings that followed soon after during which he again only gave up one earned run, Headrick was invaluable.

“You could make a case that he and [fellow reliever] Paul Blackburn are basically the two MVPs of the team from the standpoint of what you expected of these guys and where they ended up,” pitching coach Matt Blake said. “Brent in particular, every time we bring him in, we can trust him to attack the zone and execute a game plan. He’s got an awareness of who he’s facing, where to go and how to execute pitches. That’s what you need in a high-leverage guy, and we’re just continuing to infuse the confidence in him that this is real. This is who you’re supposed to be, and you need to believe that.”

There’s no doubt that Headrick’s belief in himself has grown over the course of his breakout season, and the attitude he brings to the mound is readily apparent to his regular batterymate.

“The confidence that he has built has really allowed him to take the next step,” catcher Austin Wells said. “He has taken responsibility for the role he’s in. I think that has totally helped him be more aggressive in the zone.”

While Headrick’s confidence grew this year, his success was not wholly unexpected -- at least not to him.

“If you would have told me that I would have made more than 70 appearances this season, I would have laughed, but I wouldn’t say that I’m surprised by any of the other things I have been able to do,” Headrick said. “I went into the offseason knowing what I wanted to do in terms of work ethic, and I prepared and planned for the season the right way.”

Not to undermine Headrick’s body of work prior to his time in pinstripes, but his giant leap this season begs the obvious question: How did he ascend from a spot starter who posted a 5.97 ERA over parts of two Major League seasons in Minnesota and ultimately was put on waivers in 2025 to the guy who delivered one of the most dominant seasons of any relief pitcher in 2026?

At a foundational level, just being given a shot by the Yankees gave Headrick a much-needed boost.

“That was important to me,” said Headrick, who struck out 98 hitters over 78 1/3 innings of work this season. “It helped me prove to myself that I could do this, especially after getting DFA’d. That was a big shock when I was released, and I didn’t know where I was going to be after that, but I came into camp with the Yankees and just continued to work hard. Making the team was really big for me and for my confidence.”

From the time Minnesota selected Headrick in the ninth round of the 2019 Draft through his sixth year in the organization, he bounced back and forth between being a starting pitcher and a reliever. With far different regimens geared to prepare pitchers for each role, Headrick would later realize how beneficial it was to know that he would only be pitching out of the bullpen with the Yankees, a decision that Yankees brass made early on in 2025. Even though Headrick’s time was split between Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and the Bronx last season, having a defined role gave him much-needed stability as well as the long-anticipated opportunity to grow.

“It allowed me to know what I had to do, and it also gave me the chance to run with it,” Headrick said. “I finally had a role, and I just wanted to embrace it as much as I could and learn how I could be as effective as possible as a reliever.”

As Headrick settled in to being a full-time relief pitcher, Blake was optimistic about the Illinois native’s potential upside.

“We knew that his velocity had risen in the offseason before we acquired him,” Blake said. “He had an interesting profile for a good fastball, but we were unsure of his secondary pitches. Then, as he got going, his willingness to attack the strike zone with his fastball was encouraging. It was good to see what he was capable of, while also getting a taste of the things we needed to dial in on to make him a long-term, high-leverage reliever.”

From there, Blake and the other pitching coaches at the big league level and at Triple-A worked with Headrick to round out a more diverse and devastating repertoire.

“His fastball was good in the strike zone, but it had a propensity to be hit hard by lefties,” Blake said. “So, we worked on his four-seam fastball a little more because it moves away from lefties. His slider has been good throughout, and the development of his splitter to attack righties has been huge. He didn’t really have that pitch in his bag of tools at first, and that’s come a long way in the last 12 months.”

Beyond the quality of Headrick’s arsenal, Wells pointed to the big lefty’s approach on the mound as a factor in why hitters have struggled so much against him.

“He works quickly, and that throws guys off,” Wells said. “He’s a presence on the mound. Honestly, he stands up there, and he’s just ready to rip right from the start. Hitters have to be ready to go from pitch one because that might be their only shot to do something.”

For Headrick, the 2025 season -- when he posted a 2.87 ERA across 37 games with the big club and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre -- proved to be the perfect runway.

“It was a really good introduction,” he said. “I was able to learn what works and what doesn’t. I was able to stay healthy, and because I was feeling good, I was throwing a lot harder than I had been. Also, working with Matt [Blake] and [assistant pitching coach] Preston Claiborne, I adopted this go-after-it, pack mentality, meaning that my goal with each hitter is to go after them, get strike one and finish from there. They instilled that in me, and it has been really helpful.”

The knowledge that he could pick up where he left off in 2026 shaped Headrick’s offseason, and he believes that his new regimen has also contributed to his success this season. As the case has been in previous winters, Headrick returned to Illinois, but for the first time, his preparation was tailored to a reliever’s workload and routine.

“I was able to run back the same program I was using during the 2025 season with a few nuances and advancements in order to push the line along,” Headrick said. “For my first offseason as a reliever, I knew that I didn’t have to build up as much as I had when I was a starter. I was throwing 15- or 20-pitch bullpen sessions instead of throwing 50 pitches three times. The new regimen helped me to recover better in between the days I was throwing and get back on the mound quicker. I was really preparing for a bullpen role this past offseason, throwing off the mound on more days. Being able to touch the mound more was good.”

Headrick has overcome a lot in his career. During his junior season at Illinois State University, he struggled for the first time, and after a conversation with his coach that he believes took pressure off him, he pitched well enough to get drafted. Then, after his first professional season, the COVID-19 pandemic ripped away the 2020 Minor League campaign, forcing him to compete against an expanded group of players in 2021. He continued to climb the organizational ladder with the Twins, reaching the bigs in 2023 before getting DFA’d a couple years later.

“Going through all of that makes you appreciate the success so much more,” he said. “We’ve all had injuries and different lows. Having this success, it’s a great feeling especially because of all the work I have put in.”

Through it all, Headrick has never stopped believing in himself.

“I was always going to go until I figured it out,” he said. “I have always had that drive where I wasn’t going to quit. That’s the love of the game. There are some hard days, but if you continue to work hard every day, I believe that you’ll see improvement.”

As this October approached, Headrick said that breaking the team’s single-season record for scoreless appearances was not at the forefront of his mind.

“I don’t think about it much,” he said. “Personal accolades are nice, but if they come, they come. For me, it’s more about going out there and helping my team win. It’s as simple as that because that’s all that really matters. We’re excited about the postseason.”

Regardless of how many more scoreless innings Headrick throws, his star is quite a bit brighter than it was in March. But when told the story of how he made a young fan’s day in Tampa, Headrick displayed the same down-to-earth quality that made the Spring Training moment so special in the first place.

“That’s awesome,” he said. “I hope he knows how much I appreciate his support.”

Alfred Santasiere III is the editor-in-chief of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the October 2026 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.