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Adam Warren

Adam Warren Announces Retirement

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Right-hander Adam Warren confirmed to Bryan Hoch of MLB.com yesterday that he’s retired as a player after spending parts of eight seasons in the Majors (Twitter link, with video, to Hoch’s interview with Warren). Warren, who was making an appearance at Yankees Fantasy Camp, told Hoch that he’s been enjoying time with his family but also misses being around the game and would be open to “maybe getting into some kind of coaching” role in the future.

“There’s no more attempt to come back or anything like that,” Warren replied upon being asked if he’s formally put an end to his playing career. “I’m happy with it. I had a great career — didn’t really leave anything out there, so no regrets. Totally happy with it.”

Originally signed by the Yankees as a fourth-round pick out of UNC back in 2009, Warren made his big league debut as a 23-year-old in 2012 — a spot start that proved to be his lone MLB appearance that season. He made the Opening Day roster the following year, however, and quickly established himself as a pivotal swingman providing quality, multi-inning relief out of then-manager Joe Girardi’s bullpen. Warren’s official rookie season resulted in 77 innings of 3.39 ERA ball; he made two starts, finished 11 games and picked up his first Major League win, save and hold along the way, foreshadowing the jack-of-all-trades approach to pitching that he’d embody throughout his career.

Warren worked as a setup man for the Yankees in 2014, tallying 23 holds and saving three games while pitching to a sharp 2.97 ERA in 78 2/3 innings. He stepped into the rotation for part of the 2015 season and did so almost seamlessly, starting 17 games (plus another 26 relief appearances) and working to a 3.29 ERA over the life of a career-high 131 2/3 frames. His early Yankees work caught the attention of the Cubs, who acquired him that offseason in a trade that sent Starlin Castro to the Bronx.

Warren’s time with the Cubs in 2016 went poorly and proved to be short-lived, as he was knocked around for a 5.91 ERA. As the trade deadline approached, the Cubs, then hoping to bolster the roster for a World Series push (an endeavor that ultimately proved successful) quickly traded Warren … back to the Yankees, as one of four players in a package that shipped Aroldis Chapman to Chicago. Warren almost immediately righted the ship in his return to the Bronx, and he went on to have strong performances with the Yankees in both 2017 and 2018 before being traded to the Mariners, where he had a nice finish to his 2018 campaign.

Upon reaching free agency, Warren signed with the Padres, but his time in San Diego was marred by injury. After just 25 appearances, the right-hander landed on the injured list with an arm issue that ultimately proved to be a ligament tear in his pitching elbow. He underwent Tommy John surgery that year, rehabbed in 2020 and eventually made his way back to the mound for a third stint with the Yankees organization — this time with their Triple-A affiliate in 2021.

Though Warren posted solid results in Scranton that season — 3.59 ERA in 57 2/3 innings — he didn’t receive a call to the big leagues. Warren told Hoch that “the velocity never came back like I wanted it to.” That season proved to be the final chapter in his playing career, as Warren didn’t suit up for the 2022 campaign and now, at 35 years old, doesn’t appear to be contemplating a comeback.

Warren’s career draws to an official close with a 3.53 ERA, a 20.9% strikeout rate, an 8.3% walk rate, a 30-24 record, 57 holds and six saves over the course of 492 1/3 innings. He pitched for four different big league clubs, but fans will surely remember him as a versatile, quietly excellent member of the Yankees’ pitching staff who found success in just about every role asked of him. Baseball-Reference pegs his career earnings at approximately $11.5MM, and if Warren indeed plans to pursue potential coaching opportunities, there’ll surely be chances for him to add to that tally in the next phase of his career.

Yankee fans will want to check out the entire clip of Hoch’s chat with Warren, as he talks briefly about his favorite moments in pinstripes and notes that with so many great teammates over the years, “it’s just nice to be remembered” by fans with whom he interacts. That humble mentality undersells the right-hander’s importance to the Yankees’ staff during his run with the club, and it seems quite safe to say that their fans in particular will have plenty of fond memories Warren’s time in the Bronx. Best wishes to Warren and his family in whatever’s next, and congratulations on a very fine career.

Yankees Re-Sign Adam Warren

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Earlier this week, the Yankees agreed to a minor-league deal with Adam Warren, reports Brendan Kuty of NJ.com (Twitter link). This marks the 33-year-old’s fourth separate stint in the organization.

Warren had plenty of success as a multi-inning reliever early in his career. Between 2013-17 (all but a half-season of which came with New York), he posted a 3.34 ERA/3.76 FIP over 409.2 innings. Warren remained fairly productive in a 2018 season split between the Yankees and Mariners but had a disastrous 2019 after signing with the Padres. His San Diego tenure culminated in a September Tommy John surgery.

The right-hander signed a two-year minor-league deal (covering his post-TJS rehab in year one) with the Yankees last offseason. He was cut loose this past July, but GM Brian Cashman expressed an interest at the time in working out a new deal with Warren this winter. That has apparently come to pass. Fourteen months removed from the Tommy John procedure, Warren has fully recovered, Kuty hears. He’ll now look to work his way back into the Yankees’ bullpen mix.

Yankees Release Adam Warren

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The Yankees have released righty Adam Warren, per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand (Twitter link). He had been with the team on a minor-league pact.

Warren, who has been working back from Tommy John surgery, was not a participant in Summer Camp. His contract is a two-year arrangement, befitting his rehab status.

It seems that coronavirus-related roster management matters forced the decision. GM Brian Cashman explained that Warren is progressing well, as Jack Curry of YES reports on Twitter. Indeed, the expectation is that the Yanks will work out a new deal with him in the coming offseason.

The 32-year-old Warren had a rough ’19 campaign with the Padres and hasn’t had a lot of success outside of New York. But he has always had some magic in pinstripes. Over 407 total frames with the Yanks, he carries a 3.18 ERA with 8.0 K/9 and 2.9 BB/9.

The Pitcher To Receive The Most Extra Strikes In 2019 Was…

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In a recent bout of strike zone curiosity, I started looking into umpire accuracy metrics to try to visualize the baseball world at our doorstep: a world in which balls and strikes are called by robot umpires. While referring to an electronic strike zone as “robot umpires” no doubt adds an unnecessary measure of Asimovian flourish, the reality of baseball’s future is bearing down on us. Electronic strike zones are coming to baseball.

Then again, COVID-19 threw a wrench into all pockets of predicting baseball’s future, and there’s no longer any certainty in, well, just about anything. So there will be no more crystal ball voyeurism from me today, no more speculation, only a cold, hard look at the past.

Of course, the issue of umpire accuracy is hardly reserved for the future. Until electronic strike zones are implemented, the human models making the calls behind the plate remain incapable of ridding themselves entirely of human error – try as they might. Sometimes a ball misses the plate, and they call it a strike. Sometimes it crosses the dish, and the arm stays at the umpire’s side. The question for today is this: which pitcher got the most extra strikes in 2019?

With my previous look into Statcast pitch data, I looked for clusters of pitchers that would illuminate certain things about how umpires called balls and strikes. Today is about passing along some of the trivia. Statcast data, after all, holds a ton of information, including whether or not each ball or strike was correctly called. Using machine learning, we can pretty cleanly find those pitchers who benefited the most from gifted strikes, as well as those who were hurt the most by stolen strikes.

And that brings us to Adam Warren of the San Diego Padres (frequently and presently a member of the New York Yankees). Of the pitchers who threw as many as 200 pitches in the majors in 2019, it wasn’t close: Warren benefited more than any other pitcher in 2019 from umpires gifting extra strikes.

To be perfectly clear, a gifted strike here is a pitch that lands outside the strike zone that the umpire calls a strike. This alone does not make Warren the luckiest pitcher in baseball. Nor does it make him the umpires’ favorite (though it probably gets him a look). In a vacuum, that Warren led the league in percentage of called strikes that were gifted means only this: no pitcher had a higher percentage of their called strikes come from pitches that missed the zone.

This was important for Warren because, even with the added help, only 31.4% of his pitches landed in the zone (league average was 39.4%). And while batters swung and missed at a relatively average rate when Warren was throwing strikes, batter O-Contract% – the percentage of times a batter makes contact when swinging at a ball outside the zone – was just 61.9%, much lower than the 67.3% average. So the more Warren got batters to chase, the more effective he became (surprise, surprise). Still, he only registered 7.85 K/9 versus 3.77 BB/9.

For context, MLB pitchers – on average – had ~16% of their called strikes come on pitches outside the zone. Warren, by contrast, received a gifted strike on almost 42% of his strike calls. This was an extreme outlier. The second-place finisher for highest percentage of gifted strikes was Michel Baez at ~30% – interestingly, also of the Padres (and the conspiracy is on!). Not for nothing, but Warren also fits the profile of the type of pitcher more prone to getting extra calls. He averaged just 86.4 mph this season (fastball clocking at 91.4 mph), he’s right-handed, and both his fastball and curve register in the bottom quartile for spin rate.

If he were a starter, he’d fit the mold exactly. Of course, sample size is likely a culprit here in Warren’s numbers being so far outside the norm. Warren wasn’t exactly a spotlight pitcher in 2019. He threw 555 pitches for the Padres across 25 games, 28 2/3 innings. He ended the year 4-1 with a 5.34 ERA/6.91 FIP making his season worth -0.2 bWAR/-0.8 fWAR. This is not to say he will be a total disaster if he suits up for the Yankees sometime this season, nor is it to say he’ll receive the same measure of umpire error if he does. Though Warren has been received favorably by umpires in the past, his overall average percentage of gifted strikes over the past 5 seasons is just under 28%. That still puts him two standard deviations above the mean, but nowhere near the outlier of his 2019.

Quick Hits: Warren, Yankees, ChiSox, Garland, Cubs

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It was on this day back in 1890 that the Dodgers played their first game as members of the National League, as the team then known as the Brooklyn Bridegrooms dropped a 15-9 result to the Boston Beaneaters.  Brooklyn switched leagues after winning the American Association championship in 1889, and immediately continued their success against their new competition, posting an 86-43 record in 1890 to win the NL title.  This was the first of 23 NL pennants won by the Dodgers franchise, tied with the Giants for the most in league history.

Some notes from modern-day baseball…

  • Adam Warren headed into the free agent market after undergoing Tommy John surgery last September, so amidst all of that uncertainty, he “didn’t look anywhere else” once he received interest from the Yankees, the right-hander told George A. King III of the New York Post.  Having already pitched for the Yankees in two separate stints earlier in his career, Warren said the Bronx Bombers “were my ideal team….It was a situation where I didn’t have that much bargaining power and I wanted to catch on with a team that would take a chance on me.  I was very fortunate the Yankees wanted to do that.”  Warren signed a two-year minor league contract with New York, with the expectation being that he would spend the 2020 season recovering from surgery and be ready to pitch in 2021.  If a reworked 2020 schedule leads to games deep into October or November, Warren admitted that “kind of tempts me to come back quicker, but the timing of the surgery it would feel like I am rushing back.  The most realistic goal is treat this as a gone year.”  The recovery process seems to be going rather smoothly for Warren, who said “fortunately I haven’t missed a beat too much with my rehab” even while being limited to working out at his home.
  • The Jose Quintana-for-Eloy Jimenez (and Dylan Cease) trade may not be a fond memory for Cubs fans, though an even more lopsided deal between Chicago’s two teams took place back in 1998.  The Athletic’s James Fegan looks back at what he described as the best trade in at least the modern era of White Sox history, when the Sox acquired Jon Garland from the Cubs in July 1998 for right-handed reliever Matt Karchner.  The Cubs wanted some bullpen help for their playoff drive, and picked up Karchner even though he was in the midst of struggles that lasted both before and after the trade.  Karchner pitched two more injury-plagued years and was out of baseball after the 2000 season, while Garland went on to become a mainstay of the White Sox rotation.  Garland averaged 179 innings per season from 2000-07, and played a major role for the Southsiders’ World Series-winning team in 2005.

Yankees To Sign Adam Warren

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The Yankees have reached agreement on a minor-league contract with righty Adam Warren, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (via Twitter). He’ll receive an invitation to MLB camp as a non-roster invitee. It’s a two-year arrangement, MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand notes on Twitter, which recognizes the fact that Warren is returning from Tommy John surgery.

The contract includes a $800K salary in the event that Warren is able to earn his way onto the big league roster. He can also pick up another $700K in incentives based upon appearances. The deal includes an August 28th opt-out clause, Rosenthal adds, which perhaps suggests that Warren is hoping to rehab on a fairly aggressive timetable from his September procedure.

Warren, 32, first cracked the majors with the Yanks and has spent parts of seven seasons in two prior stints in the Bronx. He pitched for the Padres in 2019, struggling to a 5.34 ERA in 28 2/3 innings with 7.8 K/9 and 3.8 BB/9.

Padres To Decline Option Over Adam Warren

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The Padres will decline their club option over right-hander Adam Warren, according to Emily Waldon of The Athletic (via Twitter). He’ll receive a $500K buyout rather than a $2MM salary.

Surprisingly, Waldon further reports, Warren underwent Tommy John surgery in September. That fact had not been publicly known. It’s likely he’ll be sidelined for the entirety of the 2020 campaign.

Warren was headed back to the open market regardless of his elbow health, but the procedure shut the door. He had struggled to a 5.34 ERA in 28 2/3 innings with the Friars. Warren turned in a 25:12 K/BB ratio and allowed nine home runs in his lone season in San Diego.

Padres Promote Michel Baez, Adrian Morejon

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SUNDAY: The promotions of Baez and Morejon are official. The Padres made room for them by optioning outfielder Josh Naylor and righty Trey Wingenter to Triple-A El Paso. They also transferred injured pitchers Adam Warren and Miguel Diaz to the 60-day IL.

SATURDAY: Righty Michel Baez’s promotion to the Padres from Double-A Amarillo is “imminent,” per the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Kevin Acee. Baez, who was a nominal starter prospect – and near-consensus top-100 name – prior to the 2019 season, has worked strictly in relief for Amarillo since returning from a back injury in mid-May.

It’s the third in a string of high-profile prospect promotions for the plummeting Padres this weekend, who also recalled INF Luis Urias from Triple-A El Paso and are set to select the contract of touted lefty Adrian Morejon, also from Double-A. The San Diego ’pen has been in shambles lately: apart from the untouchable Kirby Yates, who’s on pace for one of the best reliever seasons in MLB history, the revolving high-leverage door for the Friars hasn’t yielded a single reliable arm.

Baez’s prospect stock has slid considerably this season, with FanGraphs now characterizing his once-solid command as “fringe” and bemoaning an unforeseen velocity drop in the latter stages of the 2018 season. The 6’8 righty’s size can be a “hindrance,” per Baseball America, who notes that Baez has struggled to repeat his delivery of late. MLB.com is the high team on the 23-year-old: they place him at a solid #70 on the site’s top 100 list.

In 27 innings for Amarillo this year, Baez has set down 38 and walked 11 en route to a 2.00 ERA. Like soon-to-be teammate Morejon, Baez isn’t on the club’s 40-man roster, so two players will need to be jettisoned from the group shortly. The club also must make room for lefty Jose Castillo, who’s set to return soon from a lengthy injury absence.

Pitcher Notes: Angels, Padres, Mets, Rangers

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The Angels are set to place right-hander Trevor Cahill on the injured list with elbow soreness, according to Maria Torres of the Los Angeles Times. Manager Brad Ausmus suggested Cahill won’t miss more than one start, though. Regardless of how long he sits out, this has been a disastrous season for Cahill, who joined the Angels after a solid 2018 showing with the Athletics. The 31-year-old Cahill has recorded a 7.18 ERA/6.35 ERA with 7.18 K/9 and 3.12 BB/9 in 57 2/3 innings since the Angels inked him to a $9MM guarantee over the winter.

  • Cahill and fellow righty Matt Harvey (one year, $11MM) were the Angels’ highest-profile free-agent additions during the offseason. Harvey has joined Cahill in disappointing during an injury-limited campaign, but he’s on the way back. Harvey began a Triple-A rehab assignment Saturday, the team announced. The 30-year-old went to the IL on May 25 because of an upper back strain. He got off to a brutal start before then, posting 48 innings of 7.50 ERA/6.17 FIP pitching with 6.56 K/9, 3.94 BB/9 and 2.06 HR/9.
  • The Padres announced that they’ve placed reliever Adam Warren on the 10-day IL with a right forearm strain. The team recalled righty Gerardo Reyes in a corresponding move. The injury adds to what has been a trying season for Warren, a 31-year-old free-agent signing who has registered a 5.34 ERA/6.84 FIP with 7.85 K/9, 3.77 BB/9 and 2.83 HR/9 in 28 2/3 innings.
  • Mets reliever Justin Wilson is slated to begin a rehab assignment Tuesday, Anthony DiComo of MLB.com tweets. Wilson’s not sure when he’ll return, but barring setbacks, it’ll have to be within 30 days. Elbow soreness sent Wilson to the injured list May 11, the second time the southpaw has been on the IL with issues in the joint this season. Not only that, but Wilson – whom the Mets signed to a two-year, $10MM contract in the offseason – has yielded five earned runs on nine hits with four walks (against nine strikeouts) in 9 1/3 innings in 2019.
  • The Rangers have activated righty reliever Matt Bush and assigned him to the Double-A level, per TR Sullivan of MLB.com. It’s an important step forward for Bush, who underwent surgery on a partial UCL tear in his elbow last September. However, the procedure didn’t stop the Rangers from bringing back the 33-year-old on a minor league deal. Bush debuted with the Rangers in 2016 and has since notched a 3.35 ERA/3.65 FIP with 9.1 K/9 and 3.1 BB/9 in 137 innings.

Padres Sign Adam Warren

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The Padres have inked reliever Adam Warren, per a club announcement. It’s a one-year deal with a club option. Warren, a client of Full Circle Sports Management, is promised $2.5MM on the contract, per Jon Heyman of MLB Network (Twitter links). That includes a $2MM salary for 2019 and a $500K buyout on a $2.5MM option.

Southpaw Jose Castillo was placed on the 60-day injured list to create roster space. He is dealing with a flexor strain that is obviously considered a fairly significant malady.

Outside of a forgettable 2016 run with the Cubs, Warren has steadily produced good results at the MLB level. All said, he has thrown 463 2/3 innings of 3.42 ERA pitching. Warren carries only 7.8 K/9 in the aggregate, but he had boosted his strikeout numbers over the past two years — at least, that is, until he was dealt to the Mariners in the middle of the 2018 season. Warren racked up 11.1 strikeouts per nine in his first thirty frames of the year but dropped back to 6.2 K/9 down the stretch in Seattle.

Warren projects as another solid arm within a Padres bullpen that was already one of the team’s strengths in 2018.  Led by Kirby Yates and Craig Stammen, San Diego’s relief corps has added a pair of notable veterans in the last two weeks, between Aaron Loup and now the Warren signing.  Warren has pitched as a multi-inning reliever in the past, and perhaps could even be deployed as an “opener” should San Diego choose to adopt that strategy.

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