After rough debut, Weissert bounces back big
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Greg Weissert’s shoulders slumped and his eyes pointed toward the cement floor of the visiting dugout at the Oakland Coliseum last week, as the rookie right-hander attempted to make sense of how his Major League debut had gone so completely off the rails.
Getting his feet wet in what would go into the books as a 13-4 rout of the Athletics, Weissert hit a pair of batters, walked two, committed a balk and was ultimately charged with three earned runs in just one-third of an inning. His teammates offered back slaps and encouraging words; Weissert finally smiled when Clarke Schmidt remarked, “It could have been worse.”
From there, everything got much better for the 27-year-old Weissert. The Bay Shore, N.Y., native bounced back with two scoreless innings in Sunday's loss to the A’s, retiring all six batters with three strikeouts. He was then manager Aaron Boone’s first call out of the bullpen after starter Jameson Taillon was hit on the right wrist with a line drive on Tuesday in Anaheim.
Once again, Weissert retired all six men he faced, including a swinging strikeout of Shohei Ohtani on a filthy changeup that would soon be highlighted by the popular Pitching Ninja account on Twitter. Weissert picked up his first Major League victory as the Yankees held on for a 7-4 win.
“It feels great to put [the debut] behind me,” Weissert said. “It was definitely something to think about, but I knew that I got called up for a reason and stuck to my game plan. I talked to some guys down in Triple-A, took some advice and focused on my breathing when I went back out there. I was able to get the job done the next two times.”
Boone said Weissert’s rebound was “really good to see,” adding, “It’s easy to have it snowball on you up here. He put his foot down the next time, and I thought he went out [Tuesday] and was really efficient again.”
Weissert said that he exchanged text messages with right-hander Ryan Weber, a veteran of eight big league seasons, including three appearances this season with New York. Weber advised Weissert to slow the game down, reminding him that nothing could happen until he decided to throw the ball.
“It feels really good; it feels like playing baseball again, instead of that first initial build-up with the nerves and everything,” Weissert said. “I was able to step back, take a look at it objectively and kind of went into the next one with a different mindset.”
Added Ron Marinaccio, who also gave Weissert a verbal pat on the back that first day: “I told him to just try and throw as many strikes as you can. That’s what flipped a switch for me halfway through [this season]. I was killing myself with walks. You’ve got to figure out if your stuff is going to play, and we both know that we’ve got stuff that can play. If he fills the zone, he’s going to be tough to hit; he’s got some nasty stuff.”
An 18th-round pick out of Fordham University in 2016, Weissert became the 14th different Yankees reliever to record a victory this season. That comes on the heels of a sharp campaign in which he was 2-1 with 18 saves and a 1.76 ERA in 40 games at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, where he led the club in appearances and saves.
Credit Schmidt, and the rest of the Yankees’ roster, for pointing him past the first outing.
“Debuts are so interesting,” Schmidt said. “There’s so many emotions that go into it; you really don’t feel your legs or your release point. It’s so hard to go out there and throw strikes and stay within yourself. We just kind of talked about it and laughed about it. It was really the only thing you could do to help. I have all the confidence in the world that he’s going to continue to go back out there and get comfortable.”