The Dominant Luke Weaver Is Rapidly Disintegrating

The issue isn’t with the body work of though. Relief pitching, more than any other position in baseball, operates under a “What have you done for me lately?” policy.

That’s precisely the issue with Weaver, as he hasn’t done much lately whatsoever.

Entering the postseason, Weaver looked downright awful in the month of September. In 9.1 innings of work, he threw to a 9.64 ERA, 1.93 WHIP and .350 BAA. His month-over-month K-rate from August dropped nearly 12% (35.7% to 23.9%), and his walk rate rose over 1.5% (7.1% to 8.7%).

From a quality of contact standpoint, his hard-contact rate rose to 29.0% (from 15.6% in August), and his soft-contact rate dropped from 21.9% down to 6.5%. He’s a strikeout-centric arm by trade, but for a pitcher that only sits in the first percentile for groundball rate, that sort of quality of contact isn’t great if the ball is being elevated against him so often.

Then there’s the postseason, of course, the grand stage of which has really put Weaver’s issues into the limelight.

In three outings, Weaver has only registered one out, but has surrendered five earned runs off four hits and two walks. This gives him a stat line that you could only believe if it were placed right in front of your eyes.

His ERA has smashed through the triple digits at 135.00, which he pairs with an 18.00 WHIP and .800 BAA.

Now, any stat line will look poor when you only register one out over three appearances. The point here is that his struggles haven’t just carried over from his poor final month, but they’ve gotten worse.

And Weaver is starting to see the ramifications for his lackluster form. He did manage to record his first out of the postseason in his last outing, getting the first batter he faced in Daulton Varsho to fly out in the eighth, but it’s the circumstance in which he was brought in that should concern the Yankees faithful.

The final out in a 13-7 blowout loss is not a spot in which most teams use a highly-trusted reliever.

As quickly as things have gone bad, they could turn around just as quickly, but for the time being, it’s not a stretch to think that manager Aaron Boone has dropped Weaver down the pecking order and lost some faith in his once most-trusted arm.

And unfortunately for Yankees fans, they’re likely getting an unwanted sense of déjà vu from a year ago.

When Weaver took over as closer in ’24, it was at the expense of some poor performances from then closer Clay Holmes.

Holmes converted 30 saves last season, but that was in 43 save opportunities. If you’re doing the math at home, an under 70% conversion rate isn’t ideal for an arm tasked to anchor a bullpen.

As a result of losing his premier role in the Yankees ‘pen, he’d then go on to enter free agency in the offseason with the goal of making the switch to the rotation. He did so with the New York Mets, with relative success.

According to a report from insiders Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman, this could be a possible route Weaver looks to take this winter when he hits the market.

Even though Holmes found success in Queens, that was of no use for the Yankees, as they had to scramble to find a closing replacement on the fly while the house was on fire.

Luckily for them this time around, they accumulated the necessary closing replacements before the absolute need for a switch from Weaver was required.

Still, Weaver wasn’t to be completely cast aside, as he has still been used frequently in high-leverage moments. However, it’s looking more and more by the day that perhaps his meaningful role with the Yankees is nothing but a memory now.

However, it can’t get much worse for him right now, and those game-changing moments might be few and far between for him, if they even exist at all, given the Yankees’ backs are firmly against the wall once again. Boone will need his most trusted arms to get out of this mess, and that doesn’t seem to include Weaver anymore.

It’s very possible that we’ve seen the last of “Luke Weaver, high-leverage specialist” in the Bronx.