There is no more volatile position in baseball than a relief pitcher, and invariably some of the games best will turn unusable from one season to the next, or even in a matter of a few appearances. We’d like to think that the consistently elite guys are an exception to this rule, using the relative consistency of Kenley Jansen and Craig Kimbrel as examples, and Devin Williams certainly appeared to fit in that group. Since his rookie of the year campaign in the abbreviated 2020 season, Williams held a 1.70 ERA, 2.24 FIP and a 40.8% strikeout rate, all while allowing just 15 home runs over five seasons.

Going into his contract year at 30 years old, Williams seemed like a sure bet to fetch a pretty penny as a free agent, potentially beating the Edwin Diaz and Josh Hader contracts as the most expensive deal ever for a relief pitcher. The flaws were minimal; the one exception being his high walk rate, which generally hovered around 12%, but with his generational swing and miss stuff, he rarely ever paid the price for those free passes. Outside of that, he was more or less a two pitch pitcher, with an exceptional fastball that wasn’t reliant on velocity, but rather exceptional ride, and his signature “airbender” pitch. Classified as a change up, but closely resembling a screwball, Williams threw this almost half the time to lefties and righties, and on the rare occasion that he was hit hard, it would be on the fastball, and not the changeup.

When the Yankees acquired him this off-season for Nestor Cortes and Caleb Durbin, it felt like they had finally found a long-term closer, and at a pretty reasonable asking price. He was coming off what might’ve been his best season since 2020, joining a team that just missed out on a World Series title, partially due to their lack of bullpen depth.

So far, Williams has been a complete disaster for the Yankees, posting a 9.24 ERA in 15 games, with a 17.5% walk rate, which is sky high even for his standards. He’s already given up more runs this season than the last two years combined, and his inability to get big outs forced the Yankees to move him out of the closers role for the time being. Quantifiably, there are a couple of possible explanations as to why he’s struggled so badly, starting with the walk rate itself. This could be a byproduct of his increase in changeup usage, particularly with Williams completely ditching his seldom used cutter, but he’s always had enough command of the pitch to throw strikes, so that doesn’t explain it entirely.

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