On a Clearwater, Fla., field in March, Aaron Boone looked around the visiting dugout as Luis Gil buzzed through a representative Phillies lineup.
“I kept turning, like, anyone else seeing this?” the Yankees manager said this spring.
After Gil won a job in camp and was often dominant during the season, he has earned the sport’s attention.
Gil became the first Yankees pitcher to win AL Rookie of the Year since Dave Righetti in 1981, beating out Baltimore’s Colton Cowser (who finished second) and teammate Austin Wells (third) in voting that was announced Monday night.
The right-hander came out of nowhere to first win a spot in the club’s rotation, then rose into the early Cy Young conversation and eventually settled in as officially the best rookie in the league.
In his first full season after 2022 Tommy John surgery, Gil finished with a 3.50 ERA over 151 ²/₃ innings in 29 starts.
The Yankees needed a starter in the wake of Gerrit Cole’s injury, and for several months they uncovered an ace.
The 26-year-old was not always accurate but just about always was nasty, owning a 2.03 ERA through 14 starts.
He fluctuated over the back end of the season, with a 5.15 ERA in his final 15 regular-season starts, which was understandable for a pitcher whose career high in innings had been 108 ²/₃ in the minors in 2021.
The Dominican finished with 171 strikeouts, the second-most by a Yankees rookie ever (trailing only Ross Ford’s 209 in 1910).
The stunning emergence of Gil, while obviously welcome to the club, was too far-fetched to net the Yankees an additional draft pick.
Because he was nowhere to be found on preseason top-100-prospect lists, Gil did not qualify for the Prospect Promotion Incentive — a sweetener that promises teams an additional draft pick if they give a prolonged, major league chance to their top prospects.
Essentially, Gil did not qualify as a top prospect.
If Wells — who was on several top-100 lists entering this season — had won the award, the Yankees would have landed an extra pick in next year’s draft.
Wells finished third after a breakout season in which he seized the lion’s share of starts at catcher from Jose Trevino and rose to become Aaron Judge’s lineup protection at cleanup.
At the plate, the 25-year-old finished with an above-average .718 OPS with 13 home runs in 414 plate appearances.
Defensively, Wells finished with the third-best pitch-framing numbers in the game while holding base runners better than Trevino.
Wells, like Gil, faded late in the season in what was the longest campaign of his life.
Cowser finished with a solid .768 OPS and 24 home runs in 153 games with the Orioles, the best rookie in an organization teeming with young talent.
The Yankees signed 31-year-old infielder Pablo Reyes to a minor league deal.
Reyes owns a career .658 OPS with 13 steals in 234 major league games, all but one with the Red Sox. Reyes spent most of last season in the Mets organization and appeared in one MLB game.
