At the start of the season it looked like Luis Gil would be the Yankees’ best candidate for AL Rookie of the Year as his stellar performance on the mound coupled with his volume was highly valuable. With Colton Cowser and Wilyer Abreu getting off to fast starts alongside the performances of stud relievers Mason Miller and Cade Smith, it seemed that the pool was set for the voting until Austin Wells thrust himself into the mix. After hitting just two home runs through his first 48 games he’s been on fire, he’s become the AL leader in fWAR (3.6) and Fielding Run-Value (11).
Both of these players have cases for the award, and here’s why these two Yankees could bring home hardware in 2024.
Austin Wells Might Be the Frontrunner for Rookie of the Year
The Yankees’ 2020 first-round pick has burst onto the scene after an ugly start to his season offensively, but brilliant defensive play and some mechanical changes have brought him into the spotlight. He leads all AL rookies in Fielding Run Value (+11) and also has a 120 wRC+ on the season, providing a nice combination of defense and offense at a position where you rarely see both. He’s got the AL lead in fWAR (3.6) and has become one of the best catchers in baseball almost immediately, and he’s become the betting odds favorite to win the award.
What helps his case is that he’s playing every day now and has taken both an offensive and defensive lead over Colton Cowser, who has the most volume among his position-player counterparts. Wilyer Abreu has been the better hitter and has also been a brilliant defender, but because Wells plays the far more valuable defensive position his impact on that side of the ball is much greater. No rookie comes close to his defensive value as he could finish as a Gold Glove finalist at the catcher position in just his first season as a primary catcher.
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Defensive value is difficult to properly weigh, especially in the cases of Wilyer Abreu and Colton Cowser who are likely undervalued for their defensive efforts. At home, they play much harder positions than the average left fielder and right fielder, although adjusting to that can be difficult because it would require adjustments for their road games as well, and we still don’t truly know how to adjust for the ballpark. Austin Wells has a higher wRC+ than Cowser but a lower wRC+ than Abreu, although all three hitters are within 10 points of each other in that metric.
Baseball-Reference views Austin Wells less favorably, but that makes sense given the fact that their version of WAR doesn’t value framing much. I think it’s a flawed metric for catchers for that reason, as framing is easily the most important part of catcher defense by any measure. Every pitch can be influenced by a good or bad framer, and given the offensive value that Wells brings to the table, it makes him my pick for Rookie of the Year. Granted, there’s no way to argue that this should be a closed case.
Not only do Colton Cowser and Wilyer Abreu have valid cases for the award right now, but there’s another player on the Yankees who could get involved in this race.
The Yankees’ Dark-Horse ROY Candidate isn’t Out Yet
Funnily enough, Baseball Reference believes that Luis Gil should win Rookie of the Year if you look at their version of WAR as he holds a slim lead over the three perceived favorites for the award. He does have less WAR than all three on FanGraphs by a notable margin, but I think it’s also fair to say that we shouldn’t use that metric for pitchers. It’s hard to properly assign what pitchers should be or shouldn’t be responsible for, and in our attempts to make versions of WAR that adjust for luck, we’ve also created a messy discourse about what is or isn’t unlucky.
The easiest way to argue for Luis Gil here is that he’s thrown 130.2 innings with a 3.24 ERA, pitching at an All-Star level with plenty of strikeouts. It’ll be interesting to see how voters treat Luis Gil since it seemed like a foregone conclusion that he would win the award at the beginning of August as his slider had rejuvenated the right-hander and put him firmly back on the map. We’ll likely see him get the ball three more times this season if he stays healthy, and if he shoves I think there’s going to be a path for him to win the award.
His slider has become one of the best in the game, and it’s the kind of pitch that can be really hard to read when he throws it to the first-base side of the plate. It generates between 6-7 inches of horizontal movement but is released from an extremely wide release point horizontally, creating a sharp angle that causes hitters to chase whenever he throws it towards the first-base side of the plate.
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Since throwing this new slider, he has the fifth-widest release point from a right-handed pitcher (min. 150 pitches), and given how much movement he generates on it with good velocity, hitters find themselves chasing often. It has the second-best Run Value among sliders since that point in time as well (+7), but he’ll need to consistently land it on the first-base side of the plate in order for it to work. If he can land that slider on that part of the plate consistently it’ll work similarly to Jake Cousins, who gets chases on that pitch consistently.
Luis Gil positions himself on the third-base side of the rubber, which seems counteractive but helps him because it makes his release point even wider. He’s got moments where he looks overwhelmed by a pitch call that doesn’t go his way or long innings where he can’t execute a pitch, but that doesn’t erase that Gil has become a rather intuitive pitcher. I think that he’s capable of adapting to the league when they make adjustments to his stuff, and I also think the Yankees are one of the most forward-thinking teams in baseball on the pitching side of the ball.
The case here isn’t as strong as his battery mate in Austin Wells, but Luis Gil does have a realistic shot at the award if he’s able to close his rookie year out strong.