Every year, each MLB manager is tasked with the same math problem, regardless of how competitive their team is: Find a way to record 1,458 innings from their pitching staff.
The problem gets more challenging each year. The six years following the COVID-shortened 2020 season rank, not so coincidentally, as the six highest seasons in terms of number of pitchers used league-wide.
A high volume of innings is a commodity. A flamethrower that stays healthy is somewhat of an oxymoron.
Enter, Will Warren. A mundane, yet vital component of one of the most prestigious and expensive rotations in the sport.
New York’s Spoils of Riches
New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole has two ERA titles, two strikeout titles, and a Cy Young Award under his belt. He also makes the third-highest annual salary of any starting pitcher in baseball at $36 million dollars.
The tandem of southpaws, Max Fried and Carlos Rodon, also inked huge deals to pitch in the Bronx. That lands them at 4th and 11th, respectively, for most total value of any starting pitcher’s contract in baseball.
Then, there is current Cy Young favorite, Cam Schlittler, who leads the American League in pitching WAR and ERA through the end of August. His emergence as a top pitcher has dominated headlines all season.
The back end of the rotation has been filled out by Warren and Ryan Weathers for most of the season, the latter of whom just landed on the injured list on Aug. 23 with a left forearm flexor strain.
Games Aren’t Played on Paper
Missing time is a common theme for Yankee hurlers this season. Cole missed nearly the first two months of the season after Tommy John surgery sidelined him for all of 2025. Rodon’s throwing elbow has landed him on the injured list twice and limited him to 12 starts. Fried was also out of action for over two months in the thick of the summer and missed another two starts at the end of August with a bone bruise on his left elbow.
Weathers’ recent injury leaves Schlittler and Warren as the only two pitchers on staff to not miss any time. Schlittler leads the American League with 28 starts, already qualified for the season with 163.2 innings.
Warren toils a bit behind, though he has not missed time, having missed two starts. His turn was skipped over at the return from the All-Star Break and was pushed to the bullpen for a cycle when Fried returned on July 22. Then just four days later, on short rest, he returned to start against the Philadelphia Phillies.
That’s Will Warren’s value: his availability.
Warren Down the Stretch
His numbers aren’t flashy. His 4.23 ERA is perfectly league average, corresponding to a 100 ERA+. He averages a perfectly middle-of-the-road 9.5 H/9 and an 8/9 K/9. His savant page does not feature any of that pretty, passionate red indicating league-leading percentiles.
But he has been available to toe the rubber every five days since Opening Day 2025. He’s been a sturdy presence in a rotation ravaged by injury.
His start days aren’t guarantees. In that start against the Phillies on July 26, he gave up six runs in three innings. Then again, he followed that up with a gem against the Chicago Cubs, throwing 6.2 innings of shutout ball while punching out seven.
His most recent start was perhaps his most iconic. In a pseudo-playoff game against the Boston Red Sox, with the winner of the game taking home the season series, Warren threw seven scoreless innings, keeping the rival bats at bay. The Yankees offense took advantage of his strong performance, putting up a five-run lead in the fifth inning.
In the eighth, Warren gave up a double and an RBI single on just three pitches. It ended his day. Despite the imperfection in the runs column, he gave a taxed Yankee bullpen plenty of length. After the game, Yankee manager Aaron Boone did not sugarcoat the importance of the outing. “We were short today,” Boone said, “you go into days like this sometimes, first thing is you want to get through it.”
The Yankees ended with a mammoth 16-1 victory, thanks in no small part to Warren, who will continue to be an important piece of New York’s rotation as the season enters its final month. Following the win against Boston, Boone added: “It starts with Will Warren giving us some quality innings.”
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