Luis Gil starts the finale of the two-game Subway Series on Wednesday night and if he backs up the worst start of his career last week with another stinker and this is who he is now for the rest of the season, then he still has done his job for 2024.
The Yankees needed to bridge the first nearly three months of this season without Gerrit Cole and just remember what the feeling was in mid-March when the ace went down. The Yankees needed to trade for Dylan Cease or sign Jordan Montgomery or Blake Snell. They didn’t. Gil was plugged in. Coming off basically two missed seasons after Tommy John surgery. As a player who had never been on a prominent top 100 prospect list. As a guy who was once acquired for Jake Cave.
The expectations were low. If Gil could basically keep the Yankees in a majority of games, great.
Instead, what he did while Cole was out was pitch like Cole, whose second major league start of 2024 was Tuesday night against the Mets.
So it is not as if the Yankees do not want more from Gil. But if this is it, well, mission accomplished. Because part of value is timeliness. There is a difference between hitting a homer in a 3-3 game and a 9-0 game. And there is a difference between performing in the crest of good times and elevating in bad times. Gil replaced a player who felt irreplaceable in March, making him as valuable in the Yankees’ first half as Aaron Judge and Juan Soto.
Which brings us to the all-out alert for DJ LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres to join this season.
The Yankees are fifth in runs per game, but to watch them is to know that their offense — and, thus, their season — has overtones to 2022. Those Yankees were even better through 80 games at 58-22 to the 52-28 of this season. And that team ultimately won the AL East comfortably. But watching them in the second half was to recognize that club was being carried by a historic Aaron Judge season. They were second in the majors in runs per game, and yet it felt soft and that offense was exposed in the ALCS by the Astros.
Juan Soto has been the co-star to Judge the Yankees envisioned when he was acquired in December. But even while being fifth in runs per game at 4.99 — a near exact to the 4.98 of 2022 — all the soft spots are exposed. The Yanks had the seventh-worst OPS at first base (.644), the fifth-worst at second (.618) and the fourth-worst at third (.605).
Anthony Rizzo, the main first base culprit, is out for a while with an arm fracture. Giancarlo Stanton will be out at least a month with a hamstring strain, exposing the Yankees even more against lefties. Consider that against David Peterson, the Yanks pulled J.D. Davis from the street to hit sixth and Jahmai Jones, who basically has been in witness protection all year, was the DH batting eighth. And Torres, with a .218 average and .338 slugging percentage, was at cleanup.
Look, Ben Rice’s at-bats have looked mature and the Yankees should want to see more of it. I think Austin Wells needs to play more to get the best offense out of him and that Aaron Boone should not be hesitant to use him at DH when he is not catching. But those are still youngsters. Torres and LeMahieu are well-paid veterans with pedigrees. And they have been albatrosses to the Yankee lineup — along with Rizzo. The Yankees were winning in spite of them. But this is their Luis Gil moment. The Yankees need those guys to hit.
As he has all year, Torres insisted that looming free agency is not impacting him. But I think he loves being a Yankee and as one club official said, “He’s human,” meaning how can he not be thinking that the sand is running out on his time in pinstripes.
“What’s most important right now is we are still winning and are in first place,” Torres said. “So I basically still have a couple of months to figure out how to help my team.”
As for LeMahieu, when Boone and hitting coach James Rowson talk about a two-time former batting champ, it sounds like they are trying to be encouraging about a Little Leaguer. About how there have been hard-hit balls that haven’t gone for hits. But he was up to 76 plate appearances without an extra-base hit going into Tuesday night. He was like another former batting champ, Jeff McNeil, looking totally lost and pop-less. The Mets lineup, though, suddenly looked longer and more able to absorb a poor performer than that of the Yankees.
For the Yankees lineup not to be top-heavy with Anthony Volpe, Soto and Judge and then a lot of worry, they need LeMahieu, who woke up out of nowhere in the second half last season, and Torres, who is still in his prime, to be tough at-bats again. They need them to be like Gil — timely in a moment of need.