Paul Blackburn, coming into the seventh inning against the Twins, showed what the Yankees feel about him as a reliever. At that point, the game was 3-2, and they hadn’t yet poured on runs.
Blackburn was set to face Victor Caratini, Ryan Kreidler, and Tristan Gray and handled them pretty easily for a 1-2-3 inning. He got Caratini out with a soft ground ball that came off his bat at 74.1 MPH. He struck out Kriedler on five pitches and had him whiffing on a sweeper.
Blackburn then made Gray look especially foolish. He got him looking at a changeup at the bottom of the zone. His check swing went too far across the plate against his curveball, which landed in the dirt. Then, that changeup had Gray whiffing at the air with an ugly hack.
It could have been Blackburn’s most impressive outing with the Yankees thus far, but this isn’t anything new. The starter-turned-reliever who signed for $2 million this off-season has emerged as a real option for manager Aaron Boone late in games.
New York Yankees catcher Austin Wells (28) and relief pitcher Paul Blackburn (58) celebrate after defeating the Chicago White Sox at Yankee Stadium. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Blackburn has quietly put together a solid year statistically
Since June 1, Blackburn has been on a roll. He has 18 innings of work, striking out 14 and walking just two. He has only allowed two earned runs since then.
It looks like Blackburn did some tinkering. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was not this to start the year. From the start of the season up until that June 1 mark, Blackburn pitched 24.1 innings. He allowed nine earned runs, struck out 16, and walked 11.
He still doesn’t have prolific strikeout stuff, but the command is there, and he’s doing the most important thing: getting outs. Since Blackburn isn’t going to have the whiff rates of a David Bednar, what he does best is induce soft contact.
Batters have an 86.3 MPH average exit velocity against him. That’s in the 91st percentile in baseball. He also has a 69th percentile 6.4% barrel rate, an 85th percentile 32.8% hard hit rate, and an exorbitant 57.7% groundball rate.
Plus, don’t say he’s not athletic. There’s this from earlier in June against the Guardians.
Paul Blackburn flies off the mound and tags the runner out trying to score! pic.twitter.com/ZzZLb8AsWT
— SNY Yankees (@snyyankees) June 10, 2026
Then there was this. If ESPN covered baseball the way it did back in the day, this would be a web gem.
Paul Blackburn making between-the-legs catches look routine 🤩 pic.twitter.com/LEUF030NS9
— MLB Europe (@MLBEurope) July 2, 2026Unlocking Blackburn
It does feel clear that the Yankees may have opened up something new in Blackburn. He had an average fastball velocity of 91.7 MPH in the year he made the All-Star Game in 2022. It has steadily gone up since then during his journey to find a home, but this season, it’s up to 94.6.
At the start of the year, it didn’t seem like it made sense to have both him and Ryan Yarbrough serving the same role. Things are different now. Blackburn is the one getting high-leverage innings, effectively moving him out of that role as an innings eater.
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