Devin Williams Breaks Down His Airbender, Closer Mindset, and Decision to Join the Mets in First New York Presser

If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when a former Rookie of the Year, two-time Reliever of the Year, and owner of a pitch that defies both gravity and the Department of Transportation’s approved flight patterns officially becomes a New York Met, Devin Williams gave us the full show in his introductory presser today. Calm, candid, and sounding suspiciously like a man who’s already figured out how to get from Queens to Citi Field without Waze, Williams laid out exactly why he chose the Mets, how he plans to sharpen his arsenal, and yes—what happens to a magical airborne baseball when it meets a miserable April in Flushing.

First, the basics: Why the Mets?

“They're a team that wants to win,” Williams said. “Steve's doing all he can to put a winning product out on the field, and I'd love to be a part of that.”

This is exactly what Mets fans want to hear: that the guy joining the bullpen is on board for winning "right now", not waiting for a five-year plan or a lunar eclipse.

Williams also noted that his stint with the Yankees gave him a chance to get his New York sea legs. “It's familiar now,” he said. “I know what I'm going to need to do in order to get to the field… I’ve got all that figured out already, and I'm comfortable there.” That alone puts him ahead of 92% of transplants still wandering around Penn Station looking for the subway.

He admitted last season wasn’t perfect, but he’s dissected every layer of it: “I feel like there was kind of a lot of factors, really. Some mechanical, some pitch selection type stuff… reflecting on that and using that to help me prepare for this next season.” He added his plan: “Continue to get better at what I'm already good at and then kind of expand my arsenal a little bit,” a theme he returned to all afternoon.

That arsenal expansion includes a cutter and a “slidery type gyro slider,” which sounds less like a pitch and more like something you'd order at an all-night diner in Astoria on the way home from Citi Field. But Williams is dead serious: “Just playing with those two, seeing if I can… give myself a little more breathing room with the fastball and changeup.”

Naturally, I had to ask about "the" pitch—the one that made Williams must-see television: the Airbender. My question: how much did technology shape it, and how much did the New York cold reshape it?

His answer was wonderfully old-school meets new-school.

“Obviously, like developing it, you know, it’s just all feel, right? Like before we had Trackman and the Edgertronic and stuff, you're just doing it off of feel. You don't really have a measurement of what your pitch is actually doing.”

Once the tech arrived, refinement followed: he used the tools “in a sense of being consistent, like being able to create consistent shapes and not being bigger or smaller.”

And about that early-season New York cold?

“It was cold, obviously, but I've pitched in cold weather before… it’s just something that you just have to deal with as the season goes on.”

Which is code for: No, the Airbender won’t snap in half when the wind chill hits 34.

Williams will also reunite with David Stearns, a partnership that helped shape his rise in Milwaukee. “I'm familiar with the way that he wants the organization to run, it's another familiarity for me.”

On the Mets’ pitching lab: “They have a track record of helping guys improve on things that they already do… I think that they'll be able to help me, and I'm really curious to see what they have for me.”

Also of note: every team he spoke with saw him as a closer. “Every team I talked to was for the closer role,” he confirmed.

Which brings us to…I asked the question every bullpen-watching, ninth-inning-pacing Mets fan needed answered: If circumstances put him in a non-closer role, does the mindset change?

His reply should soothe even the most anxious heartburn-prone Mets fan:

“I think that's more of just being prepared, you know, mentally and physically. If you're going to be in before the ninth inning, you just need to be ready earlier. I don't think that really changes your mindset at all. It's just a preparation thing.”

In other words, whether he enters in the seventh, eighth, or ninth, Williams isn’t suddenly transforming into Mel Rojas.

Williams didn’t shy away from the elephant—or the trumpet—lurking in the room: whether Díaz’s potential return influenced his decision.

“If he comes back, I think we're going to have a really good back end of the pen. More good arms is always a good thing.”

Somewhere, a Mets fan with an Etsy store just crocheted "THAT" onto a pillow.

Williams summed up his free-agency pace by saying, “Honestly, I didn't really think that it was that fast for me,” emphasizing he and the Mets took their time to get it right.

And in classic first-day fashion, he closed with a simple: “Thank you,” sounding every bit the calm, steadying presence the Mets hope will anchor their bullpen.

Devin Williams came across as confident, self-aware, and fully ready for Queens. His Airbender is intact, his mindset is steady, and his attitude matches the urgency of an organization that expects to win. The Mets bullpen just got a whole lot more interesting. And—if the Airbender behaves—maybe a whole lot nastier.

Here is the full press conference :