Sequence of the Week: Devin Williams (7/27)

Photo by Dustin Satloff/Getty Images

Yankees pitching has been subpar for the better part of the last two months. A rotation that was already without Gerrit Cole looks vulnerable following Clarke Schmidt’s season-ending Tommy John surgery while the whole bullpen outside of Devin Williams has been serving up runs like they’re free samples at a Baskin-Robbins. As such, there was really only one candidate for Sequence of the Week — Williams’ lockdown ninth inning to avert the sweep against the Phillies last Sunday.

We join Williams with

two outs in the ninth after he struck out Nick Castellanos and got J.T. Realmuto to fly out. However, that brought the Phillies’ most dangerous hitter on the day to the plate in Otto Kemp. The rookie infielder entered play with just two big league home runs to his name in his first 34 career games. However, he must have eaten his Wheaties on that particular morning, because he homered in each of his first two at-bats against Carlos Rodón.

Williams starts Kemp off with a 95-mph four-seamer, Austin Wells setting a target away.

Getting the called strike on this heater just off the outside edge is the lynchpin for this entire AB. Now, Kemp has to respect any pitch that exits Williams’ hand aimed at or slightly off the outside edge of the zone if the umpire is going to call strikes out there. The favorable call throws the door wide open for Williams to go to work with his patented airbender changeup.

Williams wastes no time in going to that airbender, he and Wells agreeing on a target below the zone to try and get Kemp to chase.

It’s not the worst pitch in the world, but starts aimed a little too low to look like a strike out of the hand. Still, you’d rather miss a little too low than too high and in the zone.

Williams sticks with the changeup, perhaps hoping that Kemp will be hunting the fastball following the missed execution of the previous pitch.

That’s exactly what happens here, Kemp way out in front with his swing on this changeup in the zone. This pitch catches a lot of the plate, but that’s where Williams’ recovery of his elite changeup comes into play. During his early-season struggles, Williams’ airbender was dropping significantly less than in previous campaigns. He’s got that downward movement back, this pitch dropping a full four feet from the point of release to hitting Wells’ mitt. That insane downward movement paired with the velocity differential off the heater causes a hitter sitting dead red to whiff by a mile on a pitch that ends up down the middle.

Seeing such an off-timing whiff on the previous swing enables Williams to stick with the changeup, although he would ideally like to command the pitch to a less dangerous area below the zone.

Williams gets this pitch below the zone, but it starts way too far outside to tempt Kemp to chase, leading to an automatic take on a non-competitive pitch.

After throwing three changeups in a row, two for easy takes and one down Broadway for a whiff, the hitter is likely thinking that Williams has to go to the fastball after three consecutive missed spots. Williams must be going through the same mental calculus, because he opts for another changeup hoping to catch Kemp guessing wrong.

Location-wise, this is the best airbender Williams has thrown Kemp in this corner, just below the corner down and in. Kemp is right on time with his swing, but has no chance of putting the ball in play on an absolutely filthy changeup — honestly, he’s lucky to just get a piece and foul it off to stay alive.

Williams sees that Kemp has finally timed up his swing to the speed of the changeup, so it’s the perfect spot to try to throw the four-seamer by the hitter.

Williams climbs the ladder with this 96-mph heater, elevating it above the zone to try to induce a chase. Though it misses high for a pretty straightforward take, this is by no means a waste pitch. The velocity speeds Kemp’s bat back up while the elevation changes his eye level so that he can’t just sit on the low pitch.

Kemp has diligently fought back to work the count full, but the leverage is still firmly in Williams’ favor thanks to the seed planted in the hitter’s mind by the previous fastball. He can attack with the changeup in a fastball count as he hunts the game ending strikeout.

Bang. A perfectly executed changeup below the zone and underneath the hitter’s hands — pretty much an untouchable spot even if Kemp is sitting off-speed. The wicked movement of the pitch makes it nearly impossible to track, and Kemp foul tips it into Wells’ glove to end the game.

Here’s the full sequence:

Courtesy of Baseball Savant

After the first month of the season, not many would have predicted that Williams would emerge as the Yankees’ lone trustworthy reliever early in the second half. However, Williams has recovered the command of the fastball and movement of the changeup that made him such a devastating late-inning reliever for the Brewers, and across his last 29 appearances entering play Tuesday, he had posted a 2.28 ERA and 2.00 FIP with a 38.1-percent strikeout rate and 4.8-percent walk rate. And even in an uneven outing last night, he bent but did not break, striking out Rays All-Star Jonathan Aranda to end it.

Because of injuries to Fernando Cruz and Mark Leiter Jr. and regression by everyone else in the bullpen, the Yankees’ most pressing MLB Trade Deadline need becomes additional high-leverage relievers to preserve leads for Williams to close out. It’s at least heartening to know that they don’t need a new closer — this sequence and indeed the last three months have proven that Williams is their guy.

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