The Yankees didn’t do much to upgrade their bullpen last winter. They brought in veteran Ryan Yarbrough on a small deal. Angel Chivilli came over in a trade with the Rockies. David Bednar was back as closer after coming over at the 2025 trade deadline, but the club was losing Devin Williams, Luke Weaver, and Jonathan Loáisiga, to name a few.
New York also added former starter Paul Blackburn on a modest $2MM pact. It might’ve been the best $2MM the club spent this season.
The 32-year-old Blackburn had spent the majority of his career as a backend starter with the Athletics. He was a mediocre innings eater and not much else. Blackburn was dealt to the Mets at the 2024 trade deadline. After a dozen unremarkable appearances, he was cut in August of last season. The Yankees picked him up as a long reliever to close the year.
Despite underwhelming results, the Yankees brought Blackburn back on a major league deal. The move paid off handsomely. Blackburn delivered 85 innings of a 1.59 ERA as a key member of manager Aaron Boone’s bullpen. He led the league in ERA among pitchers who threw at least 80 innings. The rest of the top five is a star-studded list (Shohei Ohtani, Cam Schlittler, Jacob Misiorowski, Chris Sale). Blackburn picked up 11 holds and a save.
Blackburn got the typical velocity bump that comes with a starter transitioning to the bullpen. All three fastballs (four-seamer, sinker, cutter) were up 1-2 mph this year. Blackburn leads with the sinker. It had a different shape in 2026. The pitch had three less inches of vertical break and a bit more horizontal movement.
The biggest pitch mix change was increased changeup usage. Blackburn threw the pitch less than 10% of the time in 2025. That jumped to 21.4% this season, his highest rate since the shortened 2020 campaign. Blackburn’s changeup held opponents to a meager .090 batting average. They slugged just .154 against it. The pitch had a 12 Run Value, making it one of the more effective offspeed pitches in the game. Only Walbert Urena, Cristopher Sanchez, and Bradgley Rodriguez had better changeups by Run Value this year.
Unlike a lot of dominant late-inning options, Blackburn didn’t miss many bats. His 20.5% strikeout rate was a bit higher than his career mark, but not by much. Instead, he did it with groundballs and soft contact. Blackburn got grounders at a hefty 54.9% clip. He ranked in the 86th percentile in average exit velocity. The changeup and curveball both generated average exit velocities below 84 mph.
It’s an interesting approach. The arsenal is close to Nick Martinez, with an elite sinker/changeup combo supported by a cutter and curveball. The difference would be that Martinez hardly gets any groundballs. He gets a similar amount of soft contact, but it’s often in the air.
Detractors can point to a 3.68 xERA and a 3.92 xFIP. And then there’s the 5.85 SIERA, one of the biggest differences between that stat and an ERA that you’ll see. A .230 BABIP and an 88.9% left-on-base rate are unsustainable. But the home run suppression seems real, and the sample size was larger than most relievers. There’s at least enough here to not completely dismiss this as one magical season. Blackburn certainly earned himself another big-league deal in 2027.
Photo courtesy of Arianna Grainey, Imagn Images
