On Friday, the Yankees didn’t just trade for one of baseball’s most dominant relievers when they acquired Milwaukee’s All-Star closer —they also brought in one of the game’s most iconic pitches. Enter the “Airbender,” a pitch so renowned in Wisconsin that in 2023, He inspired a limited-edition beer at the Brewers’ ballpark called “Airbender Ale.”
Now, he has joined Yankees bullpen that once showcased a pitch regarded as one of the greatest in history: Mariano Rivera’s cutter. Rivera rode his signature pitch all the way to the Hall of Fame. But while the cutter was legendary, it never became a brand like the “Airbender.”
As his transitions to the Bronx, it’s worth diving into what makes his signature pitch so unique and why it’s so devastating to hitters.
So, what exactly is the “Airbender”?
In simple terms: It’s a changeup. Sort of.
He has a unique perspective on his signature pitch, telling MLB.com’s David Adler in 2023, “Changeup, changeup—it’s literally in the name. You can’t change up off of a changeup. If that’s the only thing you’re throwing, you’re not changing anything, no matter how good it is.” Traditional changeups work off the fastball, offering a contrast in speed and movement, typically with lower spin rates. They’re meant to be secondary pitches, not the primary offering. But Williams’ “changeup” isn’t traditional at all.
Williams throws the highest-spin “changeup” on record, with a staggering 2,752 RPM—hundreds more than second-place Trevor Richards. For context, the average changeup since 2015 spins at 1,769 RPM, with only a few breaking the 2,200 RPM mark. Williams’ pitch isn’t just a typical changeup; it’s an outlier, as he explained to The Athletic in 2020: “The spin I’m able to create makes it different from every other changeup.”
While spin is a key metric for pitchers, it’s the way Williams imparts that spin that makes his pitch stand out. It’s not the spin itself that matters, but how that spin affects the pitch’s movement. And Williams’ “changeup” moves unlike anything else.
In 2024, Williams’ changeup generated 19.4 inches of horizontal break—more than the width of home plate (17 inches). To put that into perspective, in 2023, only six pitch types out of nearly 2,000 combinations had at least 19 inches of break, making it a rare and remarkable movement. But there’s more to the story when we break down the direction of that movement.
The direction of the movement on Devin Williams’ changeup makes it stand out in a big way. Most high-movement pitches in baseball, especially the sweeping variety, break side-to-side towards the pitcher’s glove side. For example, pitchers like Greg Weissert, Kevin Kelly, and Danny Young all throw sweeper pitches that break towards their glove side. However, Williams’ changeup is a rare exception—it breaks towards his arm side.
This is what makes his pitch so special and effective. Throwing a huge sweeping slider or breaking ball is impressive, but it’s not uncommon. What separates Williams is that he’s creating that type of movement toward his arm side, rather than across his body.
Williams himself described the pitch in a 2020 The Athletic interview as “a backwards slider,” and former teammate Josh Hader referred to it as “a lefty slider coming out of his hand.” This comparison highlights the unique nature of the pitch.
While you might not know Danny Young, a journeyman lefty with a 4.54 ERA for the Mets, he’s in the majors primarily because of his sweeping slider. That pitch helped him limit batters to a .113 batting average and .189 slugging percentage in 2024, illustrating the effectiveness of this type of movement in major league baseball.
The comparison to Danny Young is important because it illustrates just how similar the movement of Williams’ changeup is to a sweeping slider, despite the two pitches being from different sides of the mound.
Danny Young’s sweeper features 19.6 inches of glove-side break and 43 inches of drop, while Williams’ changeup has 19.4 inches of arm-side break and 42.3 inches of drop. The movements are nearly identical in terms of raw distance traveled. However, Williams’ pitch is thrown with about 4 mph more velocity, which means it has less time to drop, making his movement even more impressive.
The key takeaway is that a pitch breaking glove side for a left-handed pitcher and one breaking arm side for a right-handed pitcher are moving in the same direction. This is especially clear when comparing the movement charts for Young and Williams, both of which show a pitch similar to a lefty slider or sweeper, but thrown by a right-handed pitcher. This unique, arm-side break is what sets Williams’ pitch apart from other changeups and makes it so effective.
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