After falling into a rut in the middle of April, the Yankees starting rotation has righted the ship in its last turn. Since the start of the series against the Royals, Cam Schlittler, Will Warren, Ryan Weathers, Luis Gil, and Max Fried all authored some of the best starts of their Yankees careers. After Fried’s gem against the Red Sox on Wednesday, their starting staff stood atop the MLB heap in both ERA and fWAR. However, it’s Gil’s start the evening before that we’re going to focus on for this
week’s installation in Sequence of the Week.
Gil entered the series opener on Tuesday coming off a pair of mediocre performances against the Rays and Angels. He had given up seven runs in nine innings (7.00 ERA) including an unsightly four home runs. With the returns of Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón from their elbow surgery rehabs looming on the horizon, you felt that Gil’s days in the rotation, and indeed on the major league roster, were numbered.
We join Gil with two outs in the second, the Yankees out to an early 1-0 lead courtesy of a Giancarlo Stanton moonshot over the Green Monster. Marcelo Mayer stands on second following a two out double, so Gil has to lock in here to prevent the Red Sox from immediately answering.
Gil had been spraying his four-seamer wildly through the first seven batters he faced. This fact combined with the need for a damage-mitigating pitch is likely behind Austin Wells’ decision to call for a first pitch sinker here.
Really good execution of the sinker here from Gil. It’s just an inch or two off the corner low and away — a call that could have gone either way but is given as ball one. He may have missed the zone with the previous pitch, but it was executed the way he wanted so there is no reason to get scared off the sinker.
This time the sinker lands squarely in the zone for a called strike one. Durbin must be hunting something inside, because he’s not even interested in offering at this heater that catches a lot of the plate. Perhaps Gil and Wells pick up on this, because they go right back to the well looking to execute a third straight sinker to the outer half.
Some excellent framing from Wells earns a generous strike two call. I’m surprised Durbin doesn’t challenge this pitch given the situation — you can see he isn’t impressed with the call but hesitates after Boston burned one of their ABS challenges earlier.
After three straight sinkers away, Gil has the situation perfectly set up for a changeup below the zone hunting the inning-ending strikeout.
What a great pitch for the strikeout! Gil perfectly executes this changeup over the plate but below the zone to induce the chase and whiff. This pitch looks like a strike for so long before diving downward at the last moment. It’s not just Gil’s command of the pitch to that spot that is impressive but his ability to tunnel it with the sinker he threw right before.
Out of the hand and for about half of it’s path toward home, the changeup looks a lot like the sinker that immediately preceded it for a called strike. In Durbin’s mind, he cannot take this pitch out of fear that he will get punched out on exactly the same pitch that put him in the two-strike hole.
Here’s the full sequence:
Though still not close to his AL Rookie of the Year form in 2024, Gil demonstrated several encouraging signs in this start. I support the increased sinker usage. Gil dropped his arm slot last season to compensate for the lat injury he suffered preseason — this robs his four-seamer of its riding life and is better suited for throwing a sinker (plus he generally exhibits better command of sinker vs. four-seamer). I also loved a handful of the changeups he threw in this game. As Joe Girardi mentioned on the broadcast, the changeup seems to be Gil’s go-to pitch to reset his mechanics, allowing him to find the right release point when he starts getting wild with the fastball and slider.
That being said, Gil’s name is likely the first on the chopping block once Rodón returns in the coming weeks. His floor is just so much lower than the other starters who are candidates to be displaced from the rotation. The main issues for Gil are command and a limited repertoire. His walk rate of 12.3-percent is almost double the next-worst starter in the rotation. His ERA is a run higher than anyone else and his 7.32 FIP more than double the next-worst mark. His primary competition — Will Warren and Ryan Weathers — both possess deeper arsenals with at least five pitches each that they trust. Gil on the other hand rarely has all three of his pitches in fastball, slider, and changeup working for him when he starts, reducing him to a two-pitch and even sometimes a one-pitch pitcher. The wayward command particularly of his secondaries is a major driver of his plummeting strikeout rate — at 13.8-percent it’s less than half that of Warren and Weathers. All of this combines to result in Gil being the starter who inspires the least confidence when he takes the mound, and the Yankees have just too many good pitchers to justify keeping him in the rotation long term.
