NEW YORK -- Right-hander Will Warren continues to show that he wants to stay in the Yankees’ rotation. On Friday night, he threw his third consecutive quality start in a 7-2 victory over the Orioles at Yankee Stadium.
Warren was dealing throughout the game, pitching 6 1/3 innings, allowing two runs (one earned) on three hits and one walk and striking out nine batters. The earned run came in the second inning when he allowed a homer to Pete Alonso, who hit a monster shot into the second deck in right field. Warren has lowered his ERA from 2.59 to 2.39. He is arguably the most underrated pitcher on New York's staff.
“You say Warren is the guy we haven’t talked about,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “The body of work starting with Spring Training has been excellent -- over and over again. … It just built up in Spring Training. It just carried into the season.
“The stuff has been excellent. The strike-throwing is there. He was in command. You see all the swings and misses. He did a great job using the sinker in combination with using the four-seamer. The sweeper looked good. He mixed in the changeup well. Just another really strong performance.”
Boone wasn’t the only one who noticed that Warren was dialed in. Orioles manager Craig Albernaz said Warren made adjustments from last year.
“[Warren] made an adjustment this year where he’s all the way over on the third-base side, so he creates that angle, especially with that sweeper and then the sinker, too,” Albernaz said. “It was a little bit tough for our guys to calibrate. They ended up calibrating, and he just did a good job of staying on the gas and the throttle and throwing a ton of strikes."
Warren is one of the reasons the Yankees currently have a stellar rotation. After Warren's outing, New York's starters have a 1.79 ERA (16 ER, 80 1/3 IP) over their past 13 games and are averaging 6 1/3 innings per start. This is all without Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón, who are on the 15-day injured list with elbow injuries.
“When I look at the [rotation], it’s Max Fried. I’m not surprised by anything he has done,” Boone said. “Cam Schlittler, with what we saw last year, Will taking another step, we are excited to bring in Ryan Weathers and he has been excellent. I can’t say I’m surprised by any individual success. The fact that they have put a two-week run with that kind of excellence, pitching deep into the game, that’s hard to come by.”
Although Warren is off to a good start, he feels there is still room for improvement.
“... We kind of shifted. There was more offspeed than I’m used to,” he said. ”Being able to shift and still have confidence throwing out there and getting the results we had is nice to do.”
It may not matter how well Warren does. He may be out of the rotation once Rodón and Cole return from their injuries. In fact, Rodón could be back in the big leagues within 10 days.
“I think we are going to have the best staff in all of baseball,” Warren said. “When they come back, the best pitchers are going to pitch the majority of the innings. I have to make sure I can go out there and do my job.”
The Yankees scored their first five runs for Warren in the first two innings off left-hander Cade Povich. Cody Bellinger drove in the first run in the opening frame when he doubled near the right-field line, scoring Aaron Judge.
An inning later, the Bronx Bombers added four more runs against Povich. Ben Rice and José Caballero hit taters. Caballero hit a solo shot into the left-field seats, while Rice hit his 11th homer, a three-run blast, into the seats in right field.
The Yankees added another run in the seventh off right-hander Albert Suárez. Judge scored his second run of the game on a single by Amed Rosario. It was Judge’s 900th career run, tying him with Jorge Posada for 19th all-time in Yankees franchise history.
New York improved its record to 21-11, the best in the American League.