Luke Weaver’s upside finally realized with Yankees after many saw potential — including Royals

They saw the arm. They were the latest to appraise the upside potential. With Luke Weaver, there always was possibility. Big fastball, low walks, high-end athlete.

The 2022 Royals were well into their sixth straight losing season and were on to planning for 2023, when they obtained Weaver from the Diamondbacks at the Aug. 1 trade deadline for third baseman Emmanuel Rivera.

J.J. Picollo, Kansas City’s GM then and now, thought there was the potential for a high-end reliever and figured the Royals could use the rest of that season as preparation for the following year. He smiles wryly before Game 1 of the ALDS at Yankee Stadium because he knows what didn’t happen for him and his team finally has in major league stop No. 6 for Weaver.

In a few hours, Weaver will go four up, four down, three strikeouts to continue his run of relief dominance and secure the Yankees’ 6-5 victory over the Royals.

“We were in a position where we could afford to try things,” Piccolo recalls. “But the half a year that he was with us, it didn’t seem like it was going the way we wanted it to go.”

Picollo said it was not that Weaver was telling the Royals he did not want to relieve, but that “is what you could tell in the conversation. He was going to train in the offseason to start, which is fine. You need starters. But we were more interested in using him in a one- or two-inning role [out of the pen].”

Weaver doesn’t remember the Royals clearly stating their plans for him as a reliever, saying, “I do not really know why I was there.” He said no job was definitively spoken about and that he was used “to mop up” with sometimes long periods of non-usage, which the game logs verify. And the Royals then lost him on waivers to the Mariners in October 2022, which was part of the nomad journey that brought Weaver not only to the Yankees, but a vital role now — and perhaps moving forward.

Again, Weaver is a talent. He was the 27th pick in the 2014 draft and the key item Arizona received to trade Paul Goldschmidt to St. Louis after the 2018 season. But after playing for the Diamondbacks and Cardinals in 2022, the righty went through the Mariners, Reds and finally three late-season starts with the Yankees in 2023.

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The Yanks liked the same high-floor potential his previous five organizations did — good athlete and fastball. The Yanks thought he was coachable and there were ways to improve the fastball further and that upgrading the fastball could have a multiplying effect on his other stuff — like greater depth on his changeup. All designed to produce more swing and miss.

The Yanks believed enough that in January they agreed with Weaver on one of the best contracts of the offseason — $2 million this year and a $2 million option for 2025. Don’t ignore how vital that will be for continuity and depth considering that Tim Hill, Clay Holmes and Tommy Kahnle are looming free agents.

But in the here and now, Weaver has emerged as a force for the Yankees. He was in play for a starting job when Gerrit Cole was hurt in spring, but for the first time in his career, Weaver spent a season exclusively as a reliever. And he said having a fully healthy offseason and regular season mixed with stability/information from the Yankees has forged this breakout.

Weaver, 31, has been good all season, bringing multi-inning versatility and strikeouts to a pen that needed both. But since unofficially replacing Holmes as the closer on Sept. 6, Weaver has been brilliant, going 3-0 and 5-for-5 in saves, without allowing a run and striking out 27 of 44 opposing hitters, which is 61.4 percent.

In some sense, Piccolo said, he is glad to see Weaver succeeding like this because it validates the Royals’ evaluation process and perhaps offers a lesson for the need for greater patience when they believe in the player.

But ultimately the Royals were a stop — one of many — on the road to Weaver finally turning what those clubs all saw into this: difference-maker for the Yankees.

“I had to survive as long as I could until I felt like I finally accomplished the end point, and this is what it looks like,” Weaver said. “And that, to me, is why teams knew it and fought hard to get me and I kept fighting hard to get here. And now we have a marriage where, hey, I’m healthy and it’s the Yankees.”