Blaming it all on Devin Williams won’t fix the Yankees’ real problems

Before the entire tristate area descends with torches and pitchforks, let's make one thing very clear: Devin Williams has been an absolute disaster for the New York Yankees this season, and especially lately. It's hard to think of another player who's had as directly negative an impact on his team's won-loss record; swap Williams out for another reliever (or heck, just the 2024 version who was one of the best closers in baseball) and the Yankees are likely still neck-and-neck with the Toronto Blue Jays atop the AL East.

So I don't blame Yankees fans for wanting to tear their hair out when Aaron Boone gave Williams the ball to start the top of the 10th inning against the Houston Astros. And I definitely don't blame them for wanting the former All-Star DFA'd after he all-too-predictably allowed three runs to score, the latest high-leverage meltdown in a year full of them.

But New York is kidding itself if it thinks that Williams is the only, or even the biggest, thing wrong with this team right now. The fact is that Boone has listened to fans' demands, and he's trying to hide the embattled reliever from important spots as much as he can. The problem is that those spots keep finding him anyway, no matter what Boone would like — and that inconvenient truth speaks to much more than just one problematic player.

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Yankees have much more to fix than just a Devin Williams problem

Boone has clearly shuffled his bullpen pecking order in the wake of New York's trade deadline additions; David Bednar is now safely ensconced as the team's closer, with both Luke Weaver and Camilo Doval leapfrogging Williams as well. (He might even trust Yerry De Los Santos more at this point, and with good reason.) Boone managed Friday night's game hoping to never have to use Williams at all. And if he'd gotten a bit more help from his offense or his starter, it would've worked.

Which is the whole point here. The Yankees keep needing to call on Williams in crucial spots because they keep on finding themselves in nail-biting games that require the entire bullpen to try and survive. New York's once-fearsome offense is just 23rd in team OPS since the All-Star break, and its starting rotation has completed six innings exactly three times in that span. Will Warren and Cam Schlittler are still young, Luis Gil is still rounding into form after a shoulder injury and Max Fried and Carlos Rodon, once the ultimate stoppers for New York, have come crashing back down to Earth.

The result is an offense that can't provide any easy wins, and a starting staff that's leaving its bullpen out to dry. And so the Yankees have spent the past few weeks playing seemingly nothing but a string of tight games, ones that require Boone to navigate three, four or even more innings from his relievers. Even if you're trying to hide Williams from high-leverage situations, eventually you're going to fail; there are only so many innings that Bednar, Weaver, Doval and the rest of the more trustworthy options can throw. You saw this on Friday night: Bednar was unavailable after Boone needed him for a 42-pitch, five-out save on Wednesday, as was Mark Leiter Jr. after throwing on both Tuesday and Wednesday in his return from the IL.

The reality is that the Yankees are simply asking too much of their bullpen right now, even after the deadline brought reinforcements. If the offense were capable of putting a game out of reach early, or if Fried and Rodon were going seven innings with regularity as they were earlier in the year, everything would become a lot easier. But New York simply isn't playing good baseball right now, and Williams is bearing the brunt of it.