With Brian Cashman not adding a reliever before the trade deadline Monday, and with a pair of Yankees starters inching closer to returns, each start has become an audition for Ryan Weathers.
Carlos Rodón and Clarke Schmidt are both tracking toward rehab assignments, though Schmidt’s live batting practice Tuesday ended after two ups instead of three with forearm cramps that, at the very least, created a temporary scare.
Cam Schlittler, Gerrit Cole and Max Fried are already positioned atop the rotation. That’d create a rotation logjam and force two — with Will Warren also factoring into the equation — to shift to the bullpen if everyone remains healthy, but Weathers continued to make his case for a spot in the rotation Tuesday, tossing six scoreless innings in the Yankees’ 2-0 win over the Cardinals to extend his scoreless streak to a career-best 17 ²/₃ consecutive innings.
“We’re all in the same ballpark of like, if that’s what my job is and that helps us win ballgames, I mean, we all have the same end goal,” Weathers said when asked if he’d welcome a move to the bullpen or if he’d want to make a case to stay in the rotation. “So if that happens, then it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”
Weathers needed just 88 pitches to navigate the Cardinals while scattering four hits, walking one and striking out six. He received plenty of help behind him from 21-year-old shortstop George Lombard Jr., who turned a pair of nifty double plays in his MLB debut. Weathers didn’t allow a runner to reach second base until the sixth inning, when JJ Wetherholt walked with two outs, Iván Herrera singled and Weathers stared down his first true jam of the night.
José Fermín drilled a sinker that carried an expected batting average of .940, according to Baseball Savant, but Heliot Ramos, making his Yankees (64-50) debut, made the catch.
“Just ran off the barrel enough to fly out to left,” Weathers said.
Manager Aaron Boone considered sending Weathers back out for the seventh inning before the walk and hard contact in the sixth, but it still marked the first time in Weathers’ career where he compiled consecutive starts with at least five scoreless innings. His ERA dropped to 3.79, the lowest it has been since May. Weathers abandoned his reliance on throwing the four-seam fastball over the past month — dropping from 28.2 percent in June to 13.3 in July, according to Baseball Savant — and threw it just seven times Tuesday, mostly due to the fact that “the other pitches stay in the ballpark,” Weathers said.
And with each of his past three starts, Weathers has started to answer the durability question that followed him to The Bronx when the Yankees acquired him in January, too. Injuries derailed his 2025 season, and he hadn’t made more than 16 starts in a season since 2021. After Tuesday’s outing, he’s up to 22 and 121 innings pitched — both career highs.
Those numbers will only continue to climb over the final two months, though that rate would significantly decrease in a bullpen role that, at the very least, Weathers is open to.
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“He was efficient, he was on the attack and I thought just used his stuff really well,” Boone said.
