One of the negatives to this Yankees offseason has been the depletion of pitching in their system. In two deals for Alex Verdugo and Juan Soto, the Yankees traded away six pitchers with the most notable being Michael King to the San Diego Padres. The departure of Michael King is a huge one. For the past two years, King has been one of the better relief pitchers in baseball, and at the backend of the Yankees' miserable 2023 season, King was beginning to emerge as a solid starting pitching option. Now the Padres are the ones who hold that option, and the Yankees are left with searching the market for starting pitching. Through many small moves this offseason, the Yankees have given themselves many options to fill the void in their bullpen. Guys like Cody Morris from the Cleveland Guardians and Cody Poteet from the Miami Marlins are intriguing, but perhaps the best option is a guy that the Yankees already had in their minor league system. This pitcher is 24-year-old Will Warren, who is currently in AAA and has many similarities to Michael King. In 2023 over 129 innings, Warren went 10-4 with a 3.35 ERA. The year before, he had a 3.91 ERA in the same number of innings. Warren is obviously a consistent pitcher, which is one of the qualities that make Michael King so great, though overall consistency is far from the only thing that compares these two pitchers.
The types of pitches that both pitchers throw are very similar with each consistently throwing a combination of fastballs, sliders, and changeups. Both pitchers sit at about 94-95 on their fastballs, which isn't very impressive given the consistent upticks in velocity over the years in baseball, but the movement on these pitches from both King and Warren are top notch, and uncannily similar. Both pitchers also have extremely effective sweeping sliders that have almost identical lateral movement. The biggest difference between the pitchers is the difference in changeups. King throws more of a power changeup that doesn't hit the ground, whereas Warren throws more of a changeup that hits the dirt and has a lot of downward action. It is still, however, a very effective third pitch. Additionally, both pitchers have very similar mechanics with the only noticeable difference being the slight tilt that Michael King has in his delivery. It seems to be that the Yankees are making a concerted effort to make Will Warren into the next Micheal King, and so far, they seem to be succeeding.
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