Yankees' Ryan Yarbrough is dominating. But why does he throw like that?
Ryan Yarbrough doesn't know why he started doing it, but it feels good. The New York Yankees' 6-foot-5 pitcher begins his delivery by raising his right leg high. But as he pushes toward home plate, he does something strange.
He drops his left arm and releases the ball like he's much shorter than he is. It's like he's skipping a rock across the surface of a pond.
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In his mind, he's doing nothing different than anyone else.
'It is weird that I feel like I'm throwing straight over the top when in all actuality, it's not,' he said recently.
What's the point of all that height if you're not going to use it?
Well, Yarbrough does. And it's one of the biggest reasons he's been a surprise in a season filled with them for the first-place Yankees.
Yarbrough's six-inning, one-run performance in Sunday's win over the Los Angeles Dodgers stopped the team that beat the Yankees in last year's World Series from sweeping them. It also dropped the 33-year-old's ERA to 2.08 over five starts since he left the bullpen to join the rotation May 3.
When the Yankees tapped Yarbrough to make the switch, they weren't asking him for much. They just needed him to do better than Carlos Carrasco, whom he was replacing as the fifth starter. Through eight games (six starts), Carrasco had a 5.91 ERA.
The bar was low. Yarbrough has hurdled it.
'It's been fun watching him toe the slab for us,' manager Aaron Boone said.
Ryan Yarbrough, Nasty 77mph Changeup. 👌 pic.twitter.com/0rPM9Ord02
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 1, 2025
Yarbrough has been among the best pitchers in baseball in several ways.
Hitters aren't squaring him up. His 84.1 mph average exit velocity and his 27.3 percent hit rate put him in the 99th percentile and the 98th percentile, respectively, among all pitchers. Opponents are barreling just 3.6 percent of his pitches, placing him in the 94th percentile in that category.
His time in the bullpen was solid, too. Though he had a 4.11 ERA in eight appearances, that figure was inflated by a four-run blowup in two-thirds of an inning.
And Yarbrough has done it in pretty much the same way he has throughout his eight-year MLB career: by being weird.
'He's got that different angle and he's not going to light up the radar gun, but all of his pitches feel like they get on you,' second baseman DJ LeMahieu said. 'His offspeed looks extra slow. Just one of those guys who's got good stuff and he knows what he's doing out there.'
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Yarbrough also features five pitches. He uses four of them almost equally, leading with his cutter (24 percent) and attacking with a sinker (23 percent), sweeper (22.6 percent) and a changeup (20.6 percent). He also mixes in a four-seamer (9.3 percent).
He throws slowly, too. Really slowly. His 87.5-mph average fastball places him within just the bottom 1 percentile of the game.
'He's different than anything you face,' Boone said.
The Yankees know that. So does Yarbrough, a thorn in his current team's side for the first five years of his career with the Tampa Bay Rays until 2021. Then he bounced among the Kansas City Royals, Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays before landing just before the start of spring training with the Yankees.
He's always been a bit of a funky side-armer, even when he was at Old Dominion before the Seattle Mariners drafted him in the fourth round in 2014. Nobody has tried to change him.
'As far as I know,' he said. 'Nothing really stands out as (a big change). There's always the running joke of the unique lefty approaches, something like that.'
Yarbrough releases the ball at an arm angle of 13 degrees, the fourth-lowest among qualified pitchers. His release point closely resembles Atlanta Braves lefty ace Chris Sale (13-degree arm angle), especially when shoulder positioning is taken into account. Sale is a lanky 6-foot-6.
The Yankees seem to have made it a point to include a variety of release points by their pitchers, particularly their bullpen. The unit spans from submarine lefty Tim Hill's 23-degree release point to a bunch of high-release righties (Mark Leiter Jr., 51 degrees; Fernando Cruz and Luke Weaver, 48 degrees).
'The slot makes it a little harder to pick up from a deception aspect, with how I throw and how I hide the ball,' Yarbrough said. 'It's the reaction I've gotten from hitters I've played against. … It's one of those things where it's hard to pick up. If they can't necessarily pick up anything on you, sooner rather than later, it puts them in a tough spot. Especially when I'm able to throw enough strikes and mix speeds. It just adds an extra element.'
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'It's a funky angle for a tall guy,' Boone said.
The Yankees have also worked with him on his pitches. For example, his slider is getting more spin and about three inches more horizontal break, according to Statcast.
'It's been more about game planning and understanding how everything works and moves,' he said. 'Maybe little tweaks with pitches, but nothing super crazy. Just really understanding how everything moves and really utilizing my whole arsenal.'
'It's tough to get a bead on him,' Boone said.
The Yankees have no reason to believe that hitters won't continue to struggle with Yarbrough as he gets even more comfortable in the rotation.
'He's fun to watch, man,' Boone said.
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