Blake: Pax can be OK with less velocity

The Yankees believe James Paxton can still return to the high-90s velocity he had before back surgery.

But on his way there, they want the lefty to learn how he can still be effective even when he isn’t lighting up the radar gun.

Paxton began to show that Sunday at Tampa Bay, not only adding a slight uptick in velocity to his fastball, but also pitching aggressively and putting together his best start of the season after opening with two clunkers.

“It showed us, really internally and him, that given who you are currently, you can still have a lot of success here,” first-year pitching coach Matt Blake said Wednesday before the Yankees hosted the Braves. “Now obviously we want the velocity to come back and we’re working to get it, but it doesn’t necessarily mean we have to overhaul who you are and how you approach it, it’s just being a little bit more understanding that you maybe don’t have as much leeway or room for error if you’re not throwing 98 and you do have to find different locations to go to.”

Blake said everything he has seen so far leads him to believe the pitcher who averaged a 96 mph fastball last year “is still in there.” The 31-year-old, who underwent back surgery in February and has said he feels healthy, averaged 93.16 mph on his fastball Sunday after averaging 92.4 and 91.46 mph in his first two starts, per Brooks Baseball.

But Blake pointed to Paxton’s unusual rehab — he had just started playing catch when spring training was suspended by the pandemic and spent much of his rehab at home in Wisconsin — as a possible explanation for his dip in velocity.

“I think that the unique part of this rehab is that he basically did it all on his own once he started throwing again,” Blake said. “So as we’ve kind of looked at it, there’s probably some general patterns that he kind of got into just playing catch at a lower intensity, and now we’re trying to kind of move him a little bit quicker and kind of get just a little bit better positions underway.”