They sure didn’t make it easy, but boy did the Yankees pick up a crucial victory on Wednesday to complete consecutive sweeps of the Cardinals and then the Rays. They held a 3-1 lead in the ninth but David Bednar blew the save to send the game to extra innings. Then, after Giancarlo Stanton and Austin Wells restored the three-run advantage with back-to-back home runs in the top of the tenth, Devin Williams threatened to give it all back giving up a single and double to open the bottom half. Thus,
the Rays had the tying run on second with no outs, and it seemed a certainty that Williams would once again find a way to lose the game from a winning position. But then Williams did what not a single Yankees fan watching could have expected, striking out the next three batters to snatch a victory from the rallying Rays.
Naturally, the most important of those punch outs was the final one to secure the save, so let’s break that sequence down pitch-by-pitch. Williams decides to attack Brandon Lowe with a first pitch fastball, expecting Lowe to be hunting one of his patented airbender changeups.
It appears that is exactly the case as Lowe is pretty late with his swing. He’s unable to catch up to the 94 mph four-seamer that caught a meaty chunk of the strike zone, just fighting the pitch off foul to the left.
Now that Williams has established that he can throw his fastball in the zone and has sped up Lowe’s bat in doing so, it’s the perfect time to go straight to the airbender hoping to fool Lowe into thinking it’s another fastball.
The plan works to a T, Lowe whiffing helplessly over the top of this changeup. You can see how out in front the swing is as Lowe anticipates another heater, only for this pitch to fall off the table once it reaches the hitting zone. Look at the way the pitch interacts with the previous changeup:
After the prior fastball exited Williams’ hand aimed at the corner up and in, only to land squarely in the zone on the inner-half, this pitch leaves Williams’ hand aimed a little lower and a little more over the plate. To Lowe, this must look like a four-seamer coming right down the pipe, and he starts his swing before the changeup’s downward movement kicks in.
Williams is in the driver’s seat, 0-2. After witnessing how far Lowe was from making contact with the previous pitch, there’s no need for him to change course. Just execute another airbender to the same spot and he should earn the strikeout swinging.
Williams perfectly replicates his delivery from the prior pitch, but Lowe isn’t tempted to chase this time. It’s just a case of a well-executed pitch getting beaten by a disciplined take.
Even though Williams couldn’t get Lowe to bite on the 0-2 changeup, he seems to have found a repeatable lane to deliver the pitch. There is no reason for him to interrupt that flow — just make your pitch and rely on Lowe not being able to put together two elite takes in a row.
That’s exactly what happens, Williams unleashing his filthiest airbender of the encounter to pretty much the same spot as the previous two he threw. Indeed, Lowe is not able watch it go this time, perhaps expecting Williams to return to the fastball after failing to induce the chase on the 0-2 airbender. He whiffs rather wildly over the top of this pitch in the dirt to end the game, and you just love to see how much it means to Williams and Austin Wells.
Here’s the full sequence:
I imagine the majority of fans’ hearts sank when they saw Williams on the mound for the tenth given his inability to preserve leads since the start of July. One outing is not enough to move the needle much among the fanbase, but this is the kind of dig-deep effort that can help him turn his season back around. He’s spoken about a lack of confidence pitching over the summer, and what better way to restore some of that confidence than a gritty performance to save the game when it looked like all hope was lost? He has rebounded from an ugly stretch already this season and given Aaron Boone’s determination to keep giving Williams high leverage situations, any bit of momentum Williams can build in his favor should be celebrated.
