Subway Series: Mets' Devin Williams, Luke Weaver looking forward to new view on rivalry with Yankees
Mets relief pitchers Luke Weaver and Devin Williams. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
It’s annually one of the best baseball events in New York, and Devin Williams and Luke Weaver are about to get a whole new perspective on the Subway Series.
Both were relievers for the Yankees a year ago when they split six games with the Mets. This weekend they will be coming out of the home bullpen at Citi Field for the Mets to face many of their former teammates.
“It’ll be obviously against a lot of old teammates and there’ll be a lot of playing for keeps at that point and trying to have the bragging rights,” Weaver said. “I’m looking forward to it, just to the magnitude of what that series and rivalry brings.”
“I’m not really expecting it to feel different playing for the other team, but I am looking forward to those games,” Williams said. “The series last year had like a playoff feel in the middle of the year . . . Both teams were very good the first time we met and it definitely felt like playoffs, like a good test coming early in the season.”
Williams and Weaver are hardly the first players to switch sides in the crosstown rivalry. In the Mets’ clubhouse right now are Juan Soto and Clay Holmes, who came over from the Yankees the year before and got their first taste of it from the other side (though Holmes did not make an appearance).
“For the most part, on both sides, you just see the passion [and] what it means for the fans in New York City,” said Holmes, who will start the series opener. “It’s a special series [and] as far as being on either side and differences, you just feel how much the fans of your team want it. I don’t know how you’d measure or compare that passion, but you feel how much the fans of your team are pulling for you.
“I have to say the best kind of environment I played in for a regular-season game is definitely a Mets-Yankees game. This is a baseball town and the games feel like they mean so much more.”
The teams are arriving from very different places. The Mets are in last place in the NL East and seven games under .500 (18-25). They had spent a lot of days with the worst record in the league but have won eight of their last 12 after completing a three-game sweep of Detroit with a 9-4 win at Citi Field on Thursday afternoon.
The Yankees spent much of the season atop the AL East but now sit in second place and two games behind Tampa Bay after losing two of three in Baltimore and going 1-5 on the first six games of the road trip. Despite the poor results on the trip, they are 10 games over .500 (27-17).
“I don’t think it really matters — what happened the week before or the month before or even what you’re trying to do for the season — because the games individually matter so much to the players and to the fans that I think you kind of disregard all that,” Holmes said. “It’s like, ‘Man, these three games mean something in their own way’ and you feel like each day kind of matters. You just want to win that day.”
One thing that Williams noted about being in the bullpens in each stadium is the amount of exposure to the fans.
“In the bullpen, you’re getting chirped [at] and that’s expected,” he said. “But you definitely get more here [at Citi Field] because you’re more exposed to that.”
He also said that being in the bullpen provides a chance to watch Yankees and Mets fans interact with each other in the stands. He said, “The fans between the two teams obviously have kind of an interesting relationship. I found it kind of cool to be a part of that.”
Asked if there was anything about playing in the Subway Series environment that he found particularly notable, Weaver replied, “There are things that just naturally happen in those games — whether you’re throwing harder, whether you feel more tuned in, whether your heart rate’s going a bit faster — it’s because it feels like something is on the line.
“It’s why these games can feel like a playoff atmosphere. Every game in the season has meaning — but these make you feel the meaning.”
While Williams is anticipating a similar feel to competing in the Subway Series as a Yankee, Weaver is looking forward to finding out about that.
“It’s always been a great series, the competition on the two sides of town,” Weaver said. “Being on one side than the other, it’s going to be different perspectives. One thing that isn’t different is the goal, and that’s to win.”
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
