DUNEDIN, Fla. — Clarke Schmidt has been where Will Warren is now.
Only two years ago, Schmidt was the right-hander coming off a season in which he made 30-plus starts to establish himself in the big leagues, even while taking some lumps along the way. Confidence was never an issue, but he arrived at camp the next spring with a different feel, a season’s worth of experience on his shoulders and information in his brain to use to his advantage.
“You don’t really feel like you belong in this league until you’re a couple years in, until you start to feel like you’ve done some type of thing, whether it’s posting [pitching every five days] or having success,” Schmidt said. “So I think that definitely plays a factor.”
They are not the same pitcher, but the Yankees would sign up for what came next for Schmidt — taking off in the first two months of 2024 before a strained lat derailed him — to come next for Warren, injury aside.
In order for that to happen, Warren will have to address a few key areas that hurt him most last season on the way to a 4.44 ERA across 33 starts. Like Schmidt, Warren had trouble with left-handed hitters.
In general, he did not pitch as well against some of the better teams he faced.
And he got hurt by a few big innings that blew up a handful of starts.
“I think it’s comfort level, honestly,” Warren said Tuesday after throwing 2 ²/₃ innings of one-run ball while striking out four in an 8-7 win over the Blue Jays at TD Ballpark. “I know that my stuff plays, based on 33 starts and 170ish innings. It’s not trying to do too much.
“Be Will Warren. Will Warren’s good enough to get people out.”
The first task will be getting through the spring healthy to begin the season in the rotation at a time when the Yankees will already be missing Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón and Schmidt to the injured list.
Warren is coming off the heaviest workload of his career last season, having thrown 167 innings including the playoffs — well past the 132 ¹/₃ innings he totaled in 2024, but he says he feels strong after only taking an extra week off or so from throwing over the offseason.
As for his plan to better attack hitters, the 26-year-old has moved from setting up on the first-base side of the rubber to the third-base side, which he believes can help against both righties (who hit .232 with a .680 OPS against him last season) and lefties (who hit .266 with a .786 OPS).
“I think it’s helped the attack angle [be] a little sharper,” said Warren, who pitched from the third-base side in college. “Righties, it feels like I’m coming at them, lefties might feel like the ball is just way out there, especially backdoor sweeper, backdoor curveball. And then just making it super sharp going into them. I think that’s the biggest thing we’re working on is just comfortability.”
Warren also mentioned wanting to throw the kitchen sink against left-handed hitters, plus putting an extra emphasis on getting ahead of them so he could keep them guessing on multiple pitches.
The Blue Jays only had three lefties in their lineup Tuesday, and after giving up hits to each of them his first time through the lineup, Warren came back to retire the lefty-hitting Daulton Varsho and Jesus Sanchez (caught looking at a front-hip sinker) back-to-back to finish off his outing.
“I see those similarities with Will, where he’s trying to get better with lefties and cut down on some of the walks,” said Schmidt, who posted a 4.64 ERA in 32 starts in 2023 before jumping to a 2.85 ERA in 16 starts in 2025. “Then you start to clean up the details and iron out all that stuff and then your game just leaps.”
Warren allowed three earned runs or fewer in 24 of his 33 starts, but also had some clunkers — most notably with disastrous first innings against the Dodgers, the Blue Jays and Red Sox — which he will need to do a better job of containing.
“Just not letting things snowball, when you get a little emotional out there and you want to go harder and you want to go faster — no. You got to execute better,” manager Aaron Boone said. “So learning how to do it, how to be, what’s that fine line of having an edge to you and a fire to you but especially as a starting pitcher, also being emotionally really steady to handle all the things that come your way in the course of the game. He’s done a good job of that, but that’s the trick for a lot of these guys.”
