What New York Yankees Should Expect from Reigning Rookie of the Year

New York Yankees pitcher Luis Gil beat Baltimore Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser for the 2024 American League rookie of the year. Gil's 15 first-place votes and 106 overall points narrowly edged out Colton's 13 first-place votes and 101 total points. Both players finished the year with a 3.1 bWAR.

Cowser was the fifth overall pick in the 2021 amateur draft, making him the kind of prospect that is supposed to contend in this race.

Gil started as an international free agent signed by the Minnesota Twins in 2015, with a $90,000 signing bonus. Cowser, for the sake of comparison, enjoyed a $4.9 million signing bonus.

Gil's 2024 campaign was a pleasant surprise for the Yankees. He's been considered a top prospect at times, but his career was also stalled by Tommy John surgery in 2022. Gil made his first Big League appearances in 2021 and 2022. That's an abnormal footnote, to make one's Major League debut four years before winning the Rookie of the Year award.

He was one of baseball's best pitchers through the first two months of the 2024 season, to the point he was in the early Cy Young conversation. He tailed off as the year went on, but still finished with a 15-7 record and a 3.50 ERA, while striking out 171 batters in 151.2 innings.

Gil's four seamer is consistently in the mid to upper 90s, complimented by a quality slider and changeup. His Whiff% on each of those pitches was at least 26.9%, per Baseball Savant.

Gil will turn 27-years-old in June. He was genuinely dominant through the first two months of last season, while featuring three above average pitches. Hitters had a .189 batting average against him, which was the lowest in the league among those that started at least 29 games.

That's all very encouraging for a player that was never expected to pitch like an ace last year. However, there are a few causes for concern moving forward.

The biggest among those is Gil led the league in walks, with 77 bases on balls. He did that despite finishing with the 64th-most innings pitched. We already established that Gil has three quality pitches, but his stuff is not overwhelmingly dominant. At least not dominating enough to overcome handing opponents the most free base runners in the sport.

Similar to last year, Gil has a history of being more streaky than consistent. He had some very productive years in the minors, paired with a run in Triple-A where he posted a 4.81 ERA over 48.2 innings. Control problems were largely behind that negative swell.

Overall, regression to the mean is likely in store for Gil, unless he can radically reduce the number of walks he hands out. That's been a problem for years, so it's hard to envision that dramatically changing. Chances are Gil does not finish 2025 with the lowest batting average against among those with at least 29 starts, like he did in 2024. We should not expect another two-month stretch of Cy Young caliber production, either.

That puts Gil on track for a bit a dip from last year, something in the range of a 1.8 bWAR and a 3.90 ERA are reasonably expectations. In other words, a good year from a back of the rotation starter, but not a great one. It would be a surprise if he duplicated some of the numbers he put up last year, most notably his opponents' batting average. Then again, Gil surprised many by winning the American League Rookie of the Year. Perhaps he'll prove his doubters wrong again in 2025.