The Yankees are living their best moment of the season and the opener rotation has been the engine behind such success — with Corey Klüber on his way and scheduled to return Monday. It looks like it was a long time ago, but in early August, this rotation didn’t feature two key pieces: Gerrit Cole and Jordan Montgomery, who spent nearly two weeks on the COVID-19 injury list.
During those days, Dominican Luis Gil – the fourth-best club prospect, according to MLB Pipeline – captivated New York. In the first three openings of his career in the Major Leagues, the 23-year-old right-handed threw 15.2 blank innings and struck out 18 rivals, a performance with historic edges.
Gil is the only Major League pitcher since 1893 to throw at least 4.2 blank innings in each of his first three performances, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. And the 15.2 blank acts to start his career are the highest for a Yankees pitcher since 1961, surpassing Joba Chamberlain’s 15.1 in 2007.
But when the Yankees announced their likely rotation for the four-game series in Oakland against the Athletics, one of their rivals in the Wildcard fight, Gil’s name was not among the openers. Instead, Gil opened Tuesday for Triple-A Scranton / Wilkes-Barre against Lehigh Valley, where he threw 6.1 innings, allowed 4 p.m. hits and two clean runs. He gave up two bases for balls and struck out six to take the victory.
Going down Gil may be a curious decision on the part of the Yankees – although Cole and Montgomery have returned to action – but manager Aaron Boone explained the reasons.
“Look, we have five guys on our rotation who are opening games right now and in many ways, we would have had to get rid of one of them to have Gil,” Boone said. “And I don’t know if that’s the smartest thing we can do right now, especially when we’re counting on a lot of really good openings.
“Obviously Luis came up, pitched really well and has placed himself in the competition, in this conversation, but … we want to keep a little bit of that depth, especially because we don’t know what we’ll need later.”
As the last month of the regular season approaches, the Yankees rotation will be adding more pieces. In addition to Klüber, Sunday’s Dominican Germán, Michael King and Luis Severino from Quisque are scheduled to join the team in September after the injury list.
This means that no matter how much success Gil has had in his openings, there is simply not enough room for him at the Major League level. And until that changes, the Yankees are eager to see what they can do on the minors by throwing regularly.
“We’re all very excited about what he can achieve as an opener, but in many ways, he’s still developing as a pitcher,” Boone recalled. “It’s important that you keep working on that consistency that you need to demonstrate to reach that level that we think you can reach.”
Gil’s role isn’t the only one that could change in the coming weeks. With all the moves the Yankees will have to make once all these serpentines return, Boone acknowledged this when he spoke of Germán’s plans. The pilot hinted that there is a very reasonable possibility that Germán will not take over the place of the rotation that he left vacant on August 1st and that instead, he could be used as a reliever.
“We’ll be looking at what our needs are,” Boone said. “It’s good to have these problems, but things will have to be resolved and we’ll see what is best for each and every one of us from now on.”
Those chances could increase, depending on news the Yankees receive about Zack Britton, who was placed on the injured list on Monday due to an elbow pull. The picture is still unclear, but Boone acknowledged that it is not ruled out that Britton will have surgery.
Germán has made three appearances as a reliever so far this year – all in July – and had an effectiveness of 7.50 with seven strikeouts in six innings. He has a 4-5 record with a net run average of 4.25 to 18 starts as an opener this season.
When asked if moving so many pieces could affect the Yankees ’pace during this great time they are living, Boone responded without hesitation.
“No,” he said. “All the guys have put their grain of sand during this streak. We’ve been playing well for over a month, with players coming and going. We’ll be happy as more good players we can get back.”