For the next five seasons, Gerrit Cole will get a salary of $36 million from the New York Yankees. The effectiveness of his elbow injury comeback could determine whether or not he is even their greatest pitcher.
A different Yankees pitcher has emerged as the team’s best pitcher, if not the top pitcher in the league, while Cole has been recovering since spring training.
The Dominican Republic’s 26-year-old Luis Gil is having a fantastic debut to his Major League Baseball career. Throughout the 2021 and 2022 seasons, Gil made seven starts; nevertheless, he did not pitch enough innings to lose his rookie classification going into 2024. And he’s been dominating the league this year.
This season, Gil has made 12 starts and is 8-1 with the best 1.82 ERA in the American League. In 69.1 innings thrown, he has struck out 85 batters and given up just a.129 batting average to opponents.
Not only has Gil been amazing, but he’s been historically exceptional. Following his most recent start on Tuesday against the Minnesota Twins, MLB researcher Sarah Langs sent a few tweets illustrating the vast amount of history he has made.
Gil has now made seven consecutive starts of six or more innings while allowing one or fewer runs after his six shutout innings on Tuesday. Only five players have had longer streaks since 1901 in Major League Baseball history: Bob Gibson (11), Josh Johnson (8), Jon Lester (8), and J.R. Richard (8). That is the longest in Yankees history.
The New York Yankees defeated the Minnesota Twins 9-5 on Wednesday night, matching their longest winning streak of the season at seven. Aaron Judge drove in five runs, and Carlos Rodón retired the first 16 batters.
With the help of a four-run first inning, Rodón (8-2) secured his sixth consecutive start of the season. It wasn’t until Carlos Santana’s fastball into the right-field seats in the sixth inning that he gave up a single.
Against Chris Paddack (4-3), Judge gave the Yankees an early lead with an RBI groundout. In the fifth inning, Judge drove in three runs off Diego Castillo, giving the team an 8-0 lead.
In the sixth inning, Judge walked with the bases loaded against Josh Staumont. With 54 RBIs, Judge has passed Juan Soto for the team lead. Only José Ramírez (58) of Cleveland has more.
