The right-hander, who had only made it through five innings once in his first four starts of the season, went deep Saturday while mowing down the Royals and yielding no runs until the seventh.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur job as a starter is to go as long as possible and get as many outs,\u201d said Warren, who did not make it out of the fourth inning in his last start against the Angels. \u201cI hadn\u2019t been doing that to the standard that I hold myself. So today was really nice to go out there and do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It marked only the second time in Warren\u2019s young career that he has pitched at least seven innings, while notching double-digit strikeouts for the third time. <\/p>\n
He did so without walking a batter, getting ahead of the Royals all afternoon and using it to his advantage.<\/p>\n
![\"Yankees](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/throws-pitch-first-inning-new-125914697.jpg\")
Yankees pitcher Will Warren (29) throws a pitch during the first inning when the New York Yankees played the Kansas City Royals Saturday, April 18, 2026 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s stood out to me is how much swing-and-miss he is getting with his fastball,\u201d manager Aaron Boone said. \u201cHe\u2019s got a unique delivery and slot that allows that to play. He\u2019s a better pitcher now than he was last year and the end of last year and he keeps growing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Royals swung at Warren\u2019s four-seamer 26 times Saturday and whiffed on seven of them. <\/p>\n
He also caught them looking for five of his strikeouts, keeping them guessing with his sinker and changeup that both ran away from their left-handed hitters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen he\u2019s in the zone, he\u2019s lights out,\u201d catcher J.C. Escarra said.<\/p>\n
The Yankees are still at least a few weeks away from having to make any decisions on their rotation, assuming all five starters stay healthy before Carlos Rod\u00f3n and Gerrit Cole potentially return from the injured list at some point in May.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGo beyond the box score with the Bombers\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Yankees by Greg Joyce, exclusively on Sports+.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
But with outings like Saturday, which lowered his ERA to 2.49 through five starts, Warren continued to make a case that he should keep his spot in the rotation regardless.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think everything was moving good and then just execution overall was good,\u201d said Warren, who also picked off Bobby Witt Jr. at first base to help ensure a shutdown inning in the fourth after being given a 5-0 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sinker is going to generate a lot of ground balls. We look at our game plan and we have a team that\u2019s going to be aggressive like [the Royals] and the Angels, typically you\u2019re going to have more strikeouts. \u2026 If I can go out there and throw three pitches and get three ground balls, I\u2019d love that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Warren has shown the ability to rack up strikeouts, but sometimes that has come at the expense…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[5,4,1690,62,2548,2547,185,772,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-678704","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-yankees","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-yankees","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkyankees","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-will-warren","16":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116428246796493904","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}