The success of the Yankee pitching staff has been the team’s guiding beacon this season, but to say they’ve had their depth tested would be an understatement. The rotation has seen at least one expected starter sitting on the IL the entire season, whether it be Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, or Ryan Weathers, oftentimes with two of them simultaneously getting shelved. The bullpen has had to do a lot of heavy lifting to support the starters working themselves back into shape lately, and though
the team has seen the trio of David Bednar, Paul Blackburn, and Brent Headrick take over the late innings, there’s still more than enough mileage that Aaron Boone has to get out of the rest of the staff.
The team opted against paying a premium for any relievers at the Trade Deadline, instead opting to rely on the arms who they knew were set to start rehab assignments soon to fill in the gaps as they fought through the dog days of summer. One of those arms being eyed for a bullpen spot was Luis Gil, the former Rookie of the Year back in 2024 who had missed most of the last two seasons with a series of injuries. Gil worked himself back into the fold at the start of the season following one tune-up start in Triple-A and made four starts in the majors back in April before hitting the shelf again with shoulder inflammation. It took a while for Gil to get back on a mound, but he began to ramp up in August and after a couple of appearances with the High-A Hudson Valley Renegades, the organization made the decision to use him in some relief appearances while rehabbing to transition him into that role since the big-league team needed bodies.
However, since getting back to the majors Gil has appeared just twice for the Yankees, and both times in blowouts. He made his return on August 31st against the Angels and soaked up the sixth and seventh innings in a game they were losing 6-1 when he entered, before getting an opportunity last night to pitch the final two frames against Colorado with a 10-2 lead. Neither outing was clean for Gil, as he allowed a run against the Angels (though he did strike out three batters) and allowed an unearned run against the Rockies with the potential for more as he loaded the bases in the ninth inning with no one out before getting some shallow fly balls to prevent any more from scoring. It’s clear from how little he’s seen the mound that Boone doesn’t exactly have much trust in Gil at the moment, and with the Yankees in the middle of a playoff push chasing the Rays for first place in the division he’s going to opt for his better relievers in close contests, but has Gil truly fallen this far down in the eyes of the organization at this point?
Looking under the hood, the clear discrepancy in Gil’s arsenal from 2024 to now has been his fastball velocity, the right-hander dropping from a 96.6-mph four-seamer in his Rookie of the Year campaign to a 95.2-mph offering this year. Hitters have predicably been able to catch up to it with ease, slugging to a .512 mark against the heater compared to .395 a few years ago. Even more concerning has been his inability to end at-bats with the pitch, dropping from a 23.3-percent PutAway% to a 9.6-percent rate this year. Gil’s slider and changeup, while still seeing a slight uptick in the damage done against them, are nowhere near as out of whack as the four-seam has been, and Gil offers the heater 49.2 percent of the time to batters giving them plenty of opportunities to punish the pitch.
Now, Gil’s latest appearance didn’t do a lot for him in the box score to stand out, but there were some signs of improvement in this category. Gil noticeably dialed up the speed in his second inning of work, topping out at 97.9 mph in a three-pitch strikeout against Zac Veen to end the game. Gil threw just one fastball below 96 mph in that frame after largely staying in that range in the eighth inning, though two of the three singles he allowed were against that four-seamer and were smashed pretty hard coming back.
That finishing pitch against Veen is more of what Gil wants to accomplish with his heater, blowing it by hitters up in the zone. However, even though Gil was able to kick the speed up a notch on his heater to accomplish this, it did come with a considerable lack of command that went unpunished by a lowly Rockies team all but going through the motions the end of a blowout.
Consider this fastball Gil threw to TJ Rumfield to conclude the penultimate at-bat of the game:
Ali Sánchez is setting up for the pitch to come on the outer third of the plate, but Gil misses and offers Rumfield a cookie down the middle of the plate. Fortunately for Gil, the former Baby Bomber swung under this pitch and popped it up for a harmless out, but that was a mistake pitch that could’ve gotten tattooed had Rumfield timed his swing a little better. Now let’s look at the fly ball that Gil induced from Hunter Goodman for the first out of the ninth:
Another miss from Gil, Sánchez setting up up and away with Gil crossing the plate to find the inside corner of the plate instead. Goodman didn’t manage to get this ball deep enough to threaten a sacrifice fly, but that’s not good execution in a situation where the Rockies were a productive out or a base knock away from forcing Boone to use his closer in a game that Bednar never should’ve needed to warm up for.
So in total, Gil gave up two hard hits against the fastball in the ninth, collected two weak outs on pitches that he largely got away with making mistakes, and then locked in to deliver a good finishing touch in his final at-bat. It’s promising that the velocity was there to bail him out because it simply hasn’t been there previously, but if either command or velocity is going to be a question mark every time Gil steps on the mound it’s no surprise that Boone has only deployed him in mop up duty thus far.
On top of Gil’s struggles, the Yankees have collected several options who have gotten priority over Gil down the stretch. The team signed Michael Fulmer and John Schreiber at the end of last month to help eat up some innings and both have seen their fair share of work already, appearing in seven and five games respectively. Schreiber in particular looks to me like an arm that Boone and company could utilize in a postseason roster, as he has been elite in shutting down right-handers this season with a .401 OPS allowed in 113 plate appearances. On the near horizon, the team also has Clarke Schmidt putting together the finishing touches on his rehab assignment before he’ll return to the majors looking to add to the bullpen’s choice of weapons. Schmidt’s had a similarly difficult time staying healthy but has looked far more effective when on the mound than Gil has in recent memory, and then there’s the possibility of Ryan Weathers returning in time from the forearm strain he suffered to add himself into the mix as well.
If all goes according to plan, there just isn’t an avenue for Gil to get himself any further chances if the Yankees want to prioritize chasing the Rays down. They could risk working Gil into some low-to-moderate leverage situations as opposed to letting him be the guy that soaks up a couple innings every week or so, but what would they stand to gain? Gil still has a lot to work on, and it looks to be a situation where he needs time more than anything else — and there isn’t any of that left to give. Having backup options still matters at this stage and there’s always the possibility of another arm hitting the shelf, but the team also has Will Warren beginning to transition into a relief role as he looks to be the likely odd man out of the playoff rotation through no fault of his own. Looking at this roster as it stands*, Gil is in even more jeopardy than Ryan Yarbrough among pitchers on the chopping block who could be squeezed back in should a situation arise. Yarbrough has been in the ‘pen throughout the year, and while he has been mostly deployed in a low leverage long-relief role that wouldn’t see much use in October, he’s been consistent enough to be trusted over Gil.
*With Jasson Domínguez getting demoted last night, another bubble reliever is joining the active roster in Bradley Hanner.
Luis Gil’s future with the Yankees is overall extremely murky — the team passed on trading him in previous offseasons, but he’ll be arbitration-eligible for the first time after this season and he hasn’t had much to show for his last two years. This relief role was his best shot at recouping some stability with the team, but he’s been supplanted in that and the rotation seems fully out of reach for him in 2027. This could potentially be the last we see of Gil in pinstripes, but it would also be selling at rock bottom to pass on Gil right now and that’s not something Brian Cashman is fond of doing. Perhaps the likeliest outcome is Gil gets relegated to the minors to start next season and either serves as depth at Triple-A with a full offseason of rest behind him or continues to work on his evolution into a reliever with Scranton, but either way it’ll be a tough climb for Gil to make his way back into the team’s plans.
