A Historic Save Wednesday Says Devin Williams is All the Way Back. Do the Data Agree?

He hasn’t thrown many innings since coming back, but the one he pitched to close out Wednesday night's nailbiter was thrilling. What does pitch-by-pitch data say about his current status?

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When Devin Williams took the mound on Jul. 28, it had been 318 days since his last competitive major-league appearance, a shaky outing in the first game of the 2023 Wild Card Series. So far, he’s back to business as usual, posting a 1.80 ERA across the five innings he has pitched, with nine strikeouts. On Wednesday night, in recording his second save of the campaign, Williams retired Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman in order, all with a one-run lead. The only instances in the last half-century of that exhilarating a baseball moment--one of the game's best closers getting out an elite trio of hitters at the top of the lineup in the ninth inning, to close out a one-run win--prior to Wednesday were:

May 24, 2006: Billy Wagner gets out Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Bobby Abreu, Mets beat Phillies
Jun. 11, 2009: Jonathan Papelbon sets down Derek Jeter, Johnny Damon, and Mark Teixeira, Red Sox beat Yankees
Jun. 29, 2023: David Bednar retires Fernando Tatis Jr, Juan Soto, and Manny Machado, Pirates beat Padres

Despite the magnitude of some of his matchups, the sample size of innings and batters faced is too small to draw any major conclusions on Williams yet. Still, I wanted to take a closer look at the plentiful data from his 79 pitches thrown so far, to see whether his stuff is still up to snuff or if he’s yet to reach his final form.

The first order of business is to check on his velocity and spin rates. These surface-level metrics should give us a broad idea of what he’s working with, and pitchers returning from long layoffs are often affected. Although it’s usually shoulder and arm injuries that have truly adverse effects on these characteristics, let’s compare and contrast his numbers year-over-year, for the sake of being thorough.

	Average Velocity (MPH)	Spin Rate (RPM)
2024 Four-Seam Fastball	95.2	2322
2023 Four-Seam Fastball	94.2	2322
2024 Changeup	84.8	2713
2023 Changeup	83.8	2683

As expected, things are pretty much the same. He’s throwing a little harder, in fact, and the spin rate hasn’t changed at all since last year (kooky!). It makes sense that he’s carrying an extra tick on the heat, since he hasn’t had the workload of an entire season and is fresh. Because of the similar velocities and spin rates, it makes sense that the amount of movement on his pitches is also virtually identical compared to last year.

So he’s still chuckin’ the ball real nice, but how has he commanded it thus far? Let’s start with his fastball. Last year, Williams loved going up and away with it, helping to compensate for his relatively average velocity. It had a whiff rate of 41.8% and a strikeout rate of 41.1%, excellent numbers for a pitch that’s usually thrown in the upper-90s by other elite relievers. This year, he has been great on the edges of the strike zone, barring a few misses here and there. He’s been slightly better with command against lefties, as there are a good amount of pitches to righties that are a little farther outside than you'd want.

The changeup, his patented “airbender,” is a little different. It has been both his best and most frequently thrown pitch since 2020. Against the 2,152 changeups that he has thrown in his career, opposing batters are averaging just .140, a ridiculous number. Only 27 of those changeups are from 2024, but the command on them still seems pretty good. To batters at the plate, the pitch simply drops off the table and tumbles more than 40 inches, understandably leading to a lot of balls ending up below the zone. Against lefty hitters, it has the added effect of breaking nearly 20 inches to his arm side, going down and away for a frustrating hitting experience overall. He has given up two hits this year, both to lefties, but one of those was iffy to say the least. At least it gave Xavier Edwards his first major-league cycle!

Here’s what it looks like when it’s working.

All in all, the verdict is: it seems like he’s going to be just fine. As mentioned earlier, while a back stress fracture isn’t your average playground boo-boo, it’s much less concerning than an arm or shoulder injury. Furthermore, it seems that both he and the Brewers had a thorough rehabilitation and recovery process to ensure that he hit the ground running when coming back to the big-league level.

To cap it all off, he faced the biggest test of his season last night. Not only did he cruise past three of the greatest hitters in the league, he did so in just seven pitches.

He’ll undoubtedly face some hiccups later on, since that’s sort of how baseball works, but for now, it seems that he’s already picked up where he left off. If anything, it might mean that he’s even fresher for high-leverage, career-defining, postseason save opportunities.

Follow Jason Wang on Twitter: jasonwang7517