{"id":108095,"date":"2025-10-06T15:29:31","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T19:29:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=108095"},"modified":"2025-10-06T15:29:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T19:29:31","slug":"struggles-continue-luke-weaver-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/10\/06\/struggles-continue-luke-weaver-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"Struggles Continue for Luke Weaver Amidst Free Agency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The New York Yankees&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/10\/04\/three-yankees-x-factors-2025-wild-card\/\" target=\"_self\">American League Division Series<\/a> is officially underway. The team has faced a massive struggle in this series so far, with nothing seeming to work. Some players&#8217; performances can affect their status next season;<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/09\/22\/yankees-must-rely-on-bullpen-in-october\/\" target=\"_self\"> Luke Weaver<\/a> is one of those players.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Struggles Continue for Luke Weaver Amidst Free Agency<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So far, Yankees pitchers have been very disappointing in the ALDS. From starters to relievers, the pinstripes have not thrown the baseball well to the heavy-hitting Toronto Blue Jays lineup.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Aside from offensive dominance, the team with the better bullpen has the advantage. The Yankees are not that team right now. Weaver is a crucial part of the relief staff, and his reliability is currently in question.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Weaver\u2019s Lack of Dominance or Reliability is Not Helping His Future Case<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The right-hander was last year\u2019s go-to out of the bullpen in the postseason. Weaver was the answer to the closer role when Clay Holmes was no longer trusted. The dominoes have somewhat fallen forward into 2025.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Yankees had already signed Devin Williams, with hopes that he would fill the closer role and have Weaver as the setup man. Due to Williams\u2019 struggles, Weaver was bounced back and forth until <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/09\/30\/yankees-closer-david-bednar-could-push-contract-interest-strong-postseason\/\" target=\"_self\">David Bednar<\/a> got there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Weaver\u2019s short relief, set-up man, and fill-in closer are all capabilities that he holds. The Yankees&#8217; right-hander has the pitchability and skill set to take on those tasks; however, his recent struggles are creating doubts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Postseason Struggles<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Weaver was summoned in game one of the American League wild card series against the Boston Red Sox. After a solid outing by Max Fried, Weaver took the wheel and did not impress. He walked one hitter, allowing two hits and two earned runs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Weaver picked up the loss from that game and did not even record a complete inning of work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He was also called on in Game 1 of the ALDS in Toronto.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Once again, he did not complete a full inning of work, but he allowed three earned runs on two hits, walking one. Weaver was then removed from the game.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The right-hander was trusted to be inserted into mop-up scenarios; the team wanted forced ground-outs or fly-outs. In this case, they received hits allowed and free bases.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Luke Weaver after ALDS G1 on October struggles\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NfAQ54jhD9s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Future Implications Pondering\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Without a doubt, Weaver and the staff know that his contract is up at the end of this season. His change in role puts him in a trial-and-error spot, where he is constantly being assessed. Weaver is currently on a club option with the Yankees.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere\u2019s been adjustments that I&#8217;ve had made based off of things people are seeing and uh, It just hasn\u2019t really lined up. It\u2019s been pretty late in the adjustment period, and it&#8217;s just not lining up out there. I don\u2019t really feel like myself, I don\u2019t feel like my mind is completely clear to go out there and attack\u201d, <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/baseball\/comments\/1nyaxm3\/luke_weaver_i_dont_really_feel_like_myself_i_dont\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Weaver told the media (Sportsnet New York)<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Weaver has his work cut out for him on the limited games they have left in 2025. His future could depend on this postseason performance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credits: Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Yankees&#8217; American League Division Series is officially underway. The team has faced a massive struggle in this series so far, with nothing seeming to work. Some players&#8217; performances can affect their status next season; Luke Weaver is one of those players. Struggles Continue for Luke Weaver Amidst Free Agency So far, Yankees [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5126,"featured_media":108099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1071,1],"tags":[2562],"class_list":["post-108095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yankees","category-mlb","category-uncategorized","tag-luke-weaver"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108095"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108100,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108095\/revisions\/108100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}