Scouting Report: Ryan Weathers

By Andy Singer

January 22nd, 2026

Photo Credit: Ryan Seebeck, Imagn Images

The Yankees' much maligned offseason thawed a bit upon trading 4 depth prospects for MLB starter, Ryan Weathers. Yankee fans, hoping for big names to reshape the roster, largely dismissed the trade while they went back to dreaming of big free agent signings or trades for players with more name recognition, like Freddy Peralta. While that sentiment is common, it doesn't change the fact that the Yankee front office made real effort to plug a perceived hole with a pitcher of some repute, years of team control, and perceived upside.

The real question is: who's sentiment is correct - Yankee fans' cool perception of Weathers' capabilities, or the Yankee front office's excitement?

Background

Ryan Weathers is the son of David Weathers, a key reliever on the Yankees' 1996 World Series winning team. While that has very little to do with projecting Weathers over the long haul, it is a fun note, particularly given that the current Yankee roster has another key player with connections to the Yankee dynasty rosters in Cody Bellinger.

Weathers is just 26 years old, and was a very well-regarded prospect dating back to his high school days. In an era in which fewer teams are spending major draft capital in the top-10 with volatile high school arms, the San Diego Padres selected Weathers with pick number 7 in the 2018 MLB Draft. Weathers was seen as a left-handed pitcher with solid velocity, good movement on both his fastball and breaking ball, advanced mechanics for his age, and the potential for good command.

As one would expect, high school pitching prospects typically take longer to develop in the minor leagues than more developed pitchers coming out of a big Division 1 program. However, Weathers' development path has differed significantly from standard practice. You can chalk that up to some combination of COVID knocking out minor league games in 2020 and the fact that the Padres have consistently exercised some incredibly strange development practices that put talent evaluators at the edge of their seats (remember, the Padres are the same team that stashed Luis Torrens on their MLB roster for an entire season after taking him in the Rule 5 Draft, despite the fact that he had never caught a game above High-A, before sending him back to the minors to finish his development). By the time Weathers made his MLB debut in 2021 at 20 years old, he had thrown just over 100 innings in the minor leagues, an absurdly small number of innings. Regardless of how advanced Weathers was as a prospect, almost no independent evaluator thought Weathers was ready for the big leagues, as he still largely depended on his fastball and slider, with nascent feel for a change-up.

Fighting Misconception

It is critical to keep the above background in mind when looking at the numbers that Ryan Weathers has produced as a big league pitcher. I am going to throw out two sets of numbers; which guy is better?

Player A: 5.88 ERA, 69 ERA+, 17.4 K%, 9.3% BB%, 1.53 WHIP, -1.3 bWAR

Player B: 3.74 ERA, 116 ERA+, 22% K%, 6.8% BB%, 1.21 WHIP, 2.7 bWAR

Obviously, we would all take Player A, right? Both are Ryan Weathers. Player A is Ryan Weathers from 2021-2023. Player B is Ryan Weathers in 2024 and 2025. Player A was not ready for the big leagues, bounced back and forth between the Majors and minors, often also bouncing between starting and relieving, while Player B was more mature and given a consistent role.

The idea that Weathers has been both not good and unhealthy at the same time simply does not hold water. The numbers clearly give us a very different story. Weathers was not good during the earliest part of his career for the Padres. Following a trade to the Marlins, Weathers began to show why talent evaluators were excited about his talent and potential, but he struggled to stay healthy.

Can He Stay Healthy?

Obviously, it's hard to know whether Weathers can keep himself active. However, the injuries he suffered do not necessarily indicate ongoing structural issues. In 2024, Weathers missed significant time with an injury to his left index finger, which has not lingered. In 2025, Weathers missed time due to a forearm strain to open the year and later a lat strain that caused him to miss the meat of the season. He was also struck in the head on a throw by his catcher just prior to landing on the IL with the lat strain. 2025 was rough for Ryan Weathers.

His issues from 2024 are a non-issue. As far as 2025 is concerned, I think it is entirely likely that the forearm strain led to some imbalances that caused the lat strain when Weathers returned mid-season. We've seen this issue multiple times with pitchers recently, and Weathers finished 2025 healthy, with a normal offseason to train. I don't expect Weathers to be a real health risk in 2026 with a normal offseason, though as I always say: pitcher is a Greek word for breaks frequently, and often irreparably.

Upside

From a pure talent perspective, Ryan Weathers is a solid number 4 starter today. He throws hard, with an excellent sweeper that has huge movement from West-to-East. Remarkably, he throws the pitch to both lefties and righties with success, something that isn't common for pitchers who throw sweepers. Weathers has also developed a change-up that is solid, with good velocity separation off of his fastball.

The problem is that Weathers has leaned on the 4-seam fastball, and it has been smacked around a fair amount despite excellent velocity. While he can get strikeouts with it at the top of the zone, it just doesn't tunnel that well with his sweeper and is likely dampening the effect of the pitch. That said, Weathers also throws a sinker, though he really didn't flash it enough with the Marlins.

Weathers' performance against hitters was middling if we look at all of his pitches thrown in 2025, but the picture is far more interesting if we isolate just his sweeper and sinker:

The metrics across the board are fantastic when we evaluate those two pitches, and Weathers threw them less than 25% of the time. Just a cursory look at the movement profile for each pitch shows that they break in completely opposite directions, but they are both hidden because Weathers throws both from such similar arm slots:

When I originally planned to write this post for last weekend, I really thought I was going to be ahead of the curve. Since then, Weathers gave an interview in which he very explicitly mentioned Matt Blake's plan to tweak his pitch usage to incorporate more sinkers to open up counts in which his 4-seam fastball makes more sense. Blake beat me to it, but the plan is beyond clear when you look at the numbers, movement profiles, and release points for these two pitches.

Ryan Weathers is a very useful pitcher right now. With a couple of very simple tweaks, Weathers could unlock another gear, one which talent evaluators always projected for him before he took the development path less traveled. Weathers has performed well in the recent past, and can be at least that, if not better for the Yankees.

Weathers already controls and commands the baseball well. He's just a pitch usage tweak away from being a great pitcher. I think we'll look back on this trade as a steal.