With closer Aroldis Chapman still out with a shoulder inflammation, the Yankees could ill afford a slump by Adam Warren. Fortunately for the Bombers, their bullpen fixture appears to be snapping out of it.
Warren came on in the eighth inning and closed out Sunday’s 9-5 win over the A’s for his first save of the year.
“We had a four-run lead. I have a lot of faith in Adam, the way he’s pitched,’’ manager Joe Girardi said. “I would’ve went to Dellin [Betances] if it was a two- or three-run lead, but I liked the way Adam’s pitched. … He has the ability to locate, he has the ability to get right-handers and left-handers out. So I felt confident with him.”
Confidence — both Girardi’s in Warren and the reliever’s in himself — has been a key. After all, he followed a 0.47 ERA over his first 11 appearances with a five-game skid from May 14-23, his ERA ballooning to 11.81.
For Warren, backing up two-thirds of an inning Saturday with another 1 ¹/₃ perfect frames Sunday was much needed.
“His last outing was good, too. He had a couple of hiccups, but the greatest relievers have hiccups, and that’s the bottom line,” Girardi said. “He’s been really consistent for us and he’s been so important to our bullpen. I knew he’d turn it back around.”
“It’s nice. He kept running me out there and it gives you confidence. I keep saying confidence, but it plays such a big role in trusting your stuff, knowing the manager is willing to keep putting you back out there,’’ Warren said. “I think that’s just him knowing me for three, four, five years. It’s just about keeping that confidence.”
That confidence let him get back to trusting all his pitches. The only mechanical change was tweaking the hand positioning on the release point for his slider to get more depth. But the biggest key was working the entire zone.
“Sometimes you get in close games and you try to be too fine, or you become predictable. For me one of my strengths is being able to pitch both sides of the plate, change speeds and be unpredictable,’’ Warren said. “Just getting back to who I was and getting the slider a little more depth to it helped as well. But I tried to keep my confidence and just pitch through it.”
“As a reliever you don’t want to get beat with certain pitches, so sometimes you don’t throw them because the room for error is high. But that’s not who I am. Getting back to pitching and trusting that I can put the ball where I want was big.”