Yankees Mag: Grab and Go

Luis Gil sat surrounded by members of his family, his bearded face and long locks screaming “Yankee in Winter.” It was mid-November, a few weeks after the Yankees had lost the World Series to the Dodgers in five games, and while fans were still dressing the emotional wounds of a journey that ended just short of the mountaintop, Gil, on this day, had reason to celebrate.

On the MLB Network broadcast that evening, 1982 AL Rookie of the Year Cal Ripken Jr. was tasked with announcing the winner of the 2024 award from a group of finalists comprising Gil, teammate Austin Wells and Baltimore’s Colton Cowser. Waiting in front of a framed shadowbox that included his No. 81 jersey, cleats and baseballs, Gil listened as the Orioles great called out his name.

The pitcher kissed his wife and exulted with his family. He had received 15 out of 30 first-place votes to Cowser’s 13, and the final tally saw him edge the outfielder by just five points, the second-tightest Rookie of the Year race since the Baseball Writers’ Association of America established the three-player ballot in 1980.

Clearly elated, relieved, honored -- you name it -- Gil joined a conference call with writers later that night as he tried to process the emotions wrapped up in a year that saw him return from Tommy John surgery and regularly manhandle opponents, all the while impressing -- even, if we’re being honest, surprising -- his teammates and coaches. Twenty-nine starts. Fifteen wins. More than 10 strikeouts per nine innings pitched. A new franchise single-game record for strikeouts by a rookie, a milestone he just happened to crack on a day when the previous record-holder, Orlando Hernández, had thrown out the ceremonial first pitch. A World Series start. And now, a Rookie of the Year Award, just the second ever won by a Dominican pitcher.

Not bad for one of the first guys cut during Spring Training.

It was a lot to digest, which could explain why the 26-year-old right-hander -- who missed all of 2023 after throwing just four innings in 2022 and 29 in his 2021 debut -- chose the wrong verb entirely to explain what had happened.

After a gracious mention of how honored he was to receive the Jackie Robinson Award as the American League’s top rookie, Gil, assisted by Yankees bilingual media relations coordinator Marlon Abreu, continued, “I’m also proud of the opportunity that was given to me by the team. It turned out to be a great season for me, a great experience. I’m so excited. It just means so much to be in this place.”

Whether that opportunity was handed to Gil is up for debate. But what is clear after spending some time with the pitcher in his native Dominican Republic this past January is that he is the one intent on doing the giving.

***

Monte Rio Beach is unlike anything you’ll find along the Jersey Shore or the Hamptons. Entirely empty on this Friday morning, the setting -- located about 15 minutes from Gil’s home in Azua, some two hours west of the nation’s capital in Santo Domingo -- perfectly frames the Caribbean’s Bahia de Ocoa. With rowboats wedged into the sand and mountains in the distance, the vista is the very definition of tranquility.

Across the street, in a restaurant with tables lined by rocking chairs, waiters begin delivering a feast. Gil sits at the head of the table next to his daughter, Samantha, and his wife, Minercy. At the other end is a group of friends who spent the morning with him working out at a gym and then throwing in an old, rusted ballpark in San Juan de la Maguana, about 90 minutes away.

What transpires is something out of a Dr. Seuss book. One fish, two fish, and so on. From seafood salads to tostones to whole fish in coconut curry sauce, every time it seems like the table has no more room, the waiter brings another plate. It’s possible that the Yankees’ relaxed pitcher has requested every fish in the Caribbean Sea for this serene yet celebratory fiesta.

It’s a cash-only spot, and Gil has ordered a feast that costs tens of thousands of Dominican pesos, but he isn’t sweating it. This is a proud time for the pitcher, in a place that means the world to him. He and Minercy have a second child on the way, and they’re raising their family just minutes from where he, himself, grew up. The new house they’ve built is beautiful. Enclosed behind the main structure is a pool and a basketball court, with murals featuring mashups of Gil and one of his sporting heroes, Kobe Bryant. There’s a theater/game room inside, the makings of what will one day be a bar, and outside sits a Jet Ski that, on dry land, seems about the size of the Titanic. What the Gil family lacks in privacy -- the house is wedged into a busy neighborhood, with early-morning traffic speeding by as parents drop kids at a nearby school -- is made up for in comfort.

“It’s very special,” Gil says, assisted by Abreu, while sitting on the beach after lunch. “Because I’m from here. This is where I was born, where my family was born. This is where I grew up.”

After a season to remember in the Bronx, Gil is a budding superstar with a bright future. In Azua, though, he’s just Luis. On the scooters that zip around town, you’ll see almost as many people with Yankees hats as without. Children smile in the direction of the modern, gated house, all perfectly aware of the famous pitcher who lives there.

Gil sees it wherever he goes. Growing up, he knew all about the Yankees, about their history of greatness. Now that he’s a part of it, he takes pride in all the interlocking NY’s that he sees from his home office.

“And that pushes me every day to give my best, to go out there and compete,” he says. “I feel the energy and the love from the fans, and especially my family.”

But it’s not just in the work that he does on the field. Gil has a little more than one year of big league service time, and while he made a reported $800,000 in 2024 (plus incentives), he wasn’t a huge prospect when he inked his first contract with the Minnesota Twins in 2015. Gil signed for a reported $90,000, a nice payday that goes much further in the Dominican Republic than it does in the United States, but a far cry from the riches that could come his way in the future if a dominant rookie campaign turns into something more.

Gil, though, isn’t waiting. This past offseason, he devoted himself to spending time in the local community. On Jan. 6, when Latin Americans celebrated Three Kings Day, Gil marked the end of the holiday season by handing out toys to local children, all the while smiling from ear to ear.

He’s constantly talking about kids, working with kids, thinking about kids. When he was recovering from Tommy John surgery, the saving grace, he says, is that Samantha was born, which helped him keep pushing forward in his rehab. He sees himself in the kids around him, whether at baseball fields or anywhere else.

“I remember when I was a kid and I would get a toy, how happy I would get,” he says. “To have the opportunity to do something like that, help spread some joy and happiness to those kids, it’s great to see. I know the feeling when you get a nice toy and you can go play with it.

“It’s really important to lead, not just on the field but off the field. I think if you set an example for people to follow, you’re creating some kind of a path. You’re showing them that it can be done.”

***

Even for a decorated young star, that path isn’t always a straight line. Gil debuted in August 2021 and was an immediate sensation, establishing a new Yankees record with 18 2/3 scoreless innings to start his career. But as is the case for so many young pitchers, a stint on the operating table followed, as Gil’s pitching elbow had to be reconstructed in the summer of 2022, all but wiping out the next two seasons.

The dance that follows Tommy John surgery -- a carefully choreographed checklist of mileposts to rebuild a pitching arm -- can be brutally drawn out for young stud athletes used to competing with ease. After spending so much time as the alpha dogs, rehab forces them to watch from the side as friends and teammates do things they temporarily can’t.

“There’s a lot of things that you’ve got to do right to get back to the point where you’re fully healthy again,” Gil says. “The No. 1 thing is following the plan in place, the recovery plan. Don’t mess with that. Make sure that everything is done at the right time. Resting. You have to rest. With all the rehabilitation that you have to do, you also have to rest. You’re taking care of your arm in any way possible so that you can move on.”

While the rehab timeline made it almost impossible for Gil to return to the Majors before the 2024 season, he at least was able to log a few Minor League innings at the end of 2023. It wasn’t until that December, throwing a bullpen session at a rickety, rusty ballfield in San Juan de la Maguana, that Gil felt like himself again, able to unleash scintillating menace from his right arm. He saw the velocity that he wasn’t sure would return. His pitches seemed sharp. It all felt easy again.

“Your mind is so worried about getting back on the field and being the same,” Gil says. “Am I going to be able to do this the way I was doing it before I got hurt? Am I going to get to that level again?”

For all the joy that Gil felt when he made his big league debut in 2021 -- a moment every ballplayer spends a lifetime dreaming about -- the sensation of returning to a Major League mound in 2024 was even more special. Maybe it was because he knew the work he had to do, how hard it all was. Maybe it was because it was all briefly taken away. Maybe it was because he had become a father in the interim, providing a new perspective on life. But he had proven something.

He struck out six Diamondbacks in that first start, but his most significant number of 2024 might have been 28 -- as in the 28 additional starts Gil made last year. It has become a cliché that the greatest ability in sports is availability, but as the art of pitching becomes even more volatile, and as the elite moundsmen seem to be balancing on an infinite razor’s edge, the value in making nearly 30 starts is almost impossible to quantify, especially when it comes from a pitcher who had never reached 100 innings in a professional season. Gil threw 151 2/3 innings in 2024, then eight more in the postseason. Not every start was as magical as the one on May 18, when he struck out 14 White Sox batters, then got to pose for pictures with the great El Duque. But after sweeping the AL Pitcher of the Month and Rookie of the Month awards in May, Azua’s native son continued to thrive.

“I guess I represent someone that hasn’t given up,” Gil says. “I missed about a year and a half, close to two, and I really wanted to be out there on the field able to compete, able to do what I love to do. You have to stay ready, and that’s what I did. I went down, I stayed ready, stayed locked in. Good things came, and eventually, they gave me the opportunity to be a starter.”

There’s that verb again, but Yankees manager Aaron Boone didn’t “give” Gil anything. Rather, the skipper marveled all year long at the way Gil’s awesome fastball could set up a devastating changeup. “You’ve seen his stuff,” Boone said on the morning of May 18, before the historic start. “When you have the weapons that he has, the stuff that he has, even if you do get yourself in trouble, he always knows he’s able to work his way out of it because at times he can overwhelm hitters.

“Whatever the count, he has a ton of confidence that he can go grab a strike with that [changeup]. It profiles well. But the confidence to throw it in any situation allows his fastball to be even a little bit better because you’ve got to honor it and respect it.”

Sustained greatness in the big leagues requires more than elite stuff; everyone’s got that. So, Gil went to school all year, just like he had during the rehab process. Sharing a clubhouse with the likes of Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón -- to say nothing of some of the legends, such as Hernández and Andy Pettitte, who pop by from time to time -- Gil insisted on taking in every lesson he could. Each start felt like a team outing, the product of the help he had gotten along the way. It wasn’t just humility that caused Gil to ask every one of his teammates to sign the back of his Pitcher of the Month plaque; he really believed it was an award shared by everyone in his orbit.

“I have to give a lot of credit to the veteran players that I have around me,” Gil says. “All those guys have so much experience. To have them right next to me, helping me, guiding me … I’m learning from them. I’m listening to their experience on the field, taking what I can implement.

“What rookie wouldn’t want to have a professor in the room, someone he can go to and ask questions, someone that can help you with your development? We all gain experience from playing at this level, but if you have people that have been there, that have done it, your development is going to move along faster.”

His first full season in The Show ended in a trip to the World Series, with Gil on the mound to start Game 4, a game the Yankees won. About 24 hours later, though, the Dodgers celebrated on the Bronx grass, and it’s hard to find too many happy memories from those last nights in October. But for Gil, there was experience gained, and all that he can take into 2025. Indeed, the pitcher says, his last start of 2024 surpassed his first for the career highlight to date.

And Gil believes that he has many more highlights ahead of him.

***

About 13 months after the breakthrough on the field at San Juan de la Maguana’s Estadio Hermanos Suárez, Gil is back for more. He sneaks through a small opening in a fence and steps onto a beautifully dusty mess of a baseball field. All around, kids are warming up to hit and throw alongside the MLB star, who will head to New York in two weeks to collect his rookie hardware before reporting to Tampa to start the 2025 season for real.

The ballpark, a somehow-perfect mix of over- and under-grown, gives off brown vibes. There’s a scoreboard that hasn’t worked in at least a few generations, moss growing up and down the foul netting, and a concrete slab where the pitching rubber should be. But it’s precisely the type of field where the next generations of Dominican stars have been learning the game for decades, the same sort of place where Gil used to try to glean all he could at the elbow of budding professionals.

“I was one of those kids,” he says, sitting in the stands after his bullpen session, watching as coaches toss BP to their young students. “You see those guys walk in, and you feel excited. You feel energetic. You want to run around. You want to do whatever you need to do that day to help out. That’s why I love coming to this field. We drove a little bit to get here, but an important part of it -- beyond me getting ready for the season -- is that these kids see me up close. Just like I was one of them at some point, you’re showing them something. You’re showing something that they can strive for: that they can do it, too. I did it. I can somehow inspire them to keep going on their path.”

But it’s still business time. Gil might be somewhat of a show pony as kids watch his every move, but this is work. His day started with the long drive to San Juan de la Maguana, where he worked out in the courtyard of a fitness facility before doing short bursts of cardio. His trainer, Oscar, stretches him in ways that would make Gumby wince, while fellow gym rats sneak glances at the big leaguer in their midst. Gil wears a Jazz Chisholm Jr. shirt and rotates through the equipment, then moves across the street to the ballfield. The plan for today, after some warmup laps and long-tosses in the outfield, is 18 pitches on the mound. Yankees assistant athletic trainer Alfonso Malaguti drove out for the morning to watch him pitch, dispatched by Boone to check on the pitcher’s status. With Spring Training around the corner (and on the heels of a long postseason run that cut down on players’ recovery time), it’s important to make sure that pitchers are progressing in their offseason workouts at the right pace, not rushing things.

It’s a lot of driving to watch 18 pitches, but that’s how important Gil is to everything the Yankees have planned for 2025. Since the 2000 season, Gil is just the eighth player to win Rookie of the Year honors primarily as a starting pitcher. The names alongside him on the list tell different stories; you have your Jacob deGroms and Justin Verlanders, but you also have Michael Fulmer, José Fernández, Jeremy Hellickson, Dontrelle Willis and Jason Jennings. There’s not a whole lot predictive there. Elite rookies burn hot; some flame out. So, Gil works to make the most of the experience he gained in 2024, in the return to the mound and the World Series and the awards and all the other spoils of a job well done.

“That’s what you take,” Gil says. “It was a great season, with many great things that happened. But you move on, and you grab the best.”

***

Did you catch it? The slight difference there in verb usage? If you ask Boone, “take” is more accurate, more appropriate. Because despite what Gil said on the call after winning the Rookie of the Year Award, everything that the pitcher did in 2024 -- and everything the team hopes he will do moving forward -- will be on account of taking. He has been given nothing.

In January, the manager stood on the dais at the 100th annual New York Baseball Writers’ Dinner and presented his rookie pitcher with the coveted hardware. While at the microphone, Boone told a story that he had shared several times, about how Cole went down with an injury last Spring Training and the team had to scramble to fill the ace’s rotation slot.

“I didn’t even consider that it was going to be Luis out of the gate,” Boone said. “Well, he had different ideas.”

Gil had been among the team’s first cuts during Spring Training. Boone and his coaches wanted the pitcher to continue working his way back into form, to find a rhythm that would be hard to reclaim after so much time away from a big league mound. But when the team needed a pitcher for a split-squad game against the Phillies, they called on Gil to fill the spot.

“To say he dominated is an understatement,” Boone said. “And we’re talking about the good Phillies lineup in Clearwater. He cut through them. And I’m looking at [bullpen coach] Mike Harkey, who was one of the big league coaches with me. I’m like, ‘Are you seeing this?’ I’m looking in the stands, I think [senior advisor] Omar Minaya was in the stands, I’m calling him on the way home, I’m like, ‘Did you see that performance?’ We send him back to Minor League camp. Five, six days later, he basically does the same thing to the Toronto Blue Jays.

“The way I put it over the whole year was, he just kicked the door in and said, ‘No, I need to be on this team.’”

As 2025 dawns, Gil probably doesn’t need to kick down many more doors. But that doesn’t mean he’s complacent. Instead, he continues to work, but more than that, he continues to give. The goal is to provide his growing family with the best life imaginable, but also to ensure that kids throughout the Dominican Republic, the Bronx and anywhere else fans might wear a pinstriped No. 81 jersey can benefit from his example.

One of the first things you see when the pitcher steps to the mound is a bold tattoo across the front of Gil’s neck: GOD BLESS ME. It’s fair to wonder if it’s a declaration or a request. (It’s also reasonable to imagine just how painful it must be to get a tattoo on your throat, but that’s another story.) For Gil, both can be true. He believes that his faith protects him and guides him; he also knows that it demands things of him. It demands work. It demands responsibility. It demands an ability to take the blessings that he has been given and use them for good.

“That’s a result of the hunger that I have to keep improving, keep getting better as a pitcher,” he says. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s a feeling deep inside, a competitive spirit that you feel, that you know you can do better, that you know that you can take the game deeper, that you can help the team more.”

And for Gil, whether on the mound, on the beach with his family and friends, or surrounded by children, the will to be better -- to take what he needs and to give what he can -- will never stop being a driving force.

Jon Schwartz is the deputy editor of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the Spring 2025 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.