Yankees' Devin Williams might be best served by temporarily changing roles

Devin Williams stood in front of reporters after his blown save Friday night with the air of defeat still clinging to his pores. His eyes were glassy, his voice low, his demeanor downcast, all while being asked to answer what, for him,  currently is an unanswerable question.

Why?

We’ve seen this play out before. A player who once had it suddenly doesn’t, and everyone wants to know what happened. This is mostly a product of frustrated fans who are promised one version of an athlete and get another. It’s also a product of our own anxieties: If there’s a reason for a man’s implosion, then it’s fixable, avoidable, controllable.

The thing is, though, for us lay people, the “why” doesn’t really matter all that much. That’s for the experts — namely, Williams and Aaron Boone and pitching coach Matt Blake and the Yankees' fancy pitching lab — to figure out.

The question for the rest of us is: “Well, what now?”

At the moment, the answer feels pretty obvious. It’s time for a change, both for the Yankees’ sake and for Williams’.

Friday night was a tough scene. There’s little room for sympathy in baseball, and Williams, now the owner of an unsightly 11.25 ERA, was regaled with boos and chants of “we want Weaver” — referencing deposed closer Luke Weaver, who has yet to allow a run in 13 innings this year. And it’s understandable: Williams was considered one of the best closers in baseball, and he’s getting behind in counts, has little control of the strike zone, and has that faraway look in his eyes that you never want to see out of a guy whose role it is to spit in the face of self-doubt and shut the door regardless.

Everyone feels the sting of failure, no matter how good you’ve been in the past, and certainly something like that has to erode your confidence. And frankly, whatever ego hit Williams might suffer from being relegated to lower-leverage situations is nothing compared to the agony of watching batters circle around him as if they’re in a vintage baseball arcade game.

Granted, there are some who believethe only way to get through hell is to keep going. Success begets confidence, and maybe Williams needs to prove to himself that he can do this job in big-time situations — something that no doubt will make the Yankees better down the stretch.

But right now isn’t the time for it — not when Williams is new to the Bronx after coming from Milwaukee, juggling new teammates, a new baby, a new home and, pivotally, the harsh spotlight of outsized expectations. The Yankees also aren’t without other late-inning options, and it’s time to deploy that luxury.

Without coming out and saying it, it did sound as if Boone also believes it’s time for "Dream Weaver" to be a ninth-inning song.

Is Williams still the closer? “We’ll still talk through this,” Boone said Saturday after the Yankees' game against the Blue Jays was postponed because of rain.  “We’re trying to do what’s best for the team and Devin. Let’s get through this bump in the road and still expect great things.”

Asked how much credence he puts into the idea that some players simply can’t perform in New York, he was even-handed.

“I think a lot of the times, it’s overblown,” he said. “Sometimes it’s baseball, but when it’s here, we say, it’s New York [that caused him to] do well or didn’t. And a lot of times it’s just small samples and flashes in time. Sometimes it is real. Sometimes you’re adjusting to a new environment and situation. So again, we’ll look into all of that. But I feel like physically, he’s still got all the physical stuff to be an elite closer.”

So there's that aspect. For those still looking for a greater “why,” Boone offered a few possibilities, though it kind of turned into a “chicken or the egg” scenario.

Williams is getting behind in counts, he hasn’t gotten swings and misses, it’s early in the season and his location and velocity aren’t there yet.

A further look at his Baseball Savant page shows that neither his fastball nor his famed “Airbender” changeup are grading out particularly well, and hitters are making contact on a whopping 71.4% of his pitches out of the zone — meaning Williams, who’s always been an elite strikeout pitcher, has lost that weapon for now. While he hasn’t allowed a homer, batters have a .429 batting average on balls put in play: That’s absurdly high, which partially speaks to plain bad luck, but also could indicate that they’re achieving a high quality of contact, allowing hits to drop in.

It's an unfortunate confluence of events, but it’s also not the end. Baseball is a game of failure, right? The key is to fail in a way that lets you bend but never break. Stashing him in lower-leverage situations for now might accomplish that goal.

“You play this game long enough, you have a career in this, you’re going to face tough moments,” Boone said. “You’re going to go through tough, tough moments. That’s just part of being a player, and the ones that get through it are usually better served for it. I hope and believe that’s the case with Devin.”

Now it’s up to the Yankees to give Williams his best shot at bending failure into success.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.