Brandon Brown
On Saturday, New York Yankees right-hander Luis Gil set a new franchise rookie record by striking out 14 batters in a win against the Chicago White Sox. Gil’s performance was timely in one respect: The pitcher who previously held the record, Orlando Hernández (perhaps best remembered as “El Duque”), was on hand to throw the ceremonial first pitch.
Consider this a fitting development for Gil, whose continued presence in the Yankees rotation is also a happy accident. If not for Gerrit Cole’s injury in the spring, Gil would likely be placed in New York’s bullpen — or, even worse, the Triple-A rotation. Instead, he made nine rounds in the Yankees rotation and did well along the way. He enters Monday boasting a 2.39 ERA (164 ERA+) and a 2.30 strikeout-to-walk ratio. His estimated 1.5 Wins Above Replacement ranks first among American League rookie pitchers, moving the Oakland Athletics closer to Mason Miller.
Gil can credit his success to what has been a devastating mix of three pitches: a 96 mph fastball, a 91 mph changeup and an 87 mph slider, all of which play hotter thanks to a deep launch point. (He throws the ball about five inches farther than his 6-foot-11 frame predicts.) Every pitch has generated at least a 30 percent hit rate this season, and none has yielded an opponent average better than .170. It’s no wonder he’s managed to strike out over 30% of the hitters he’s faced so far.
If there is an eggshell in Gil’s dough, it is in the shape of a bed. He demonstrated some of the worst control among big league starting pitchers, entering Sunday with the second-highest walk rate among the league’s qualified pitchers at 13.6%, better than only Cleveland Guardians right-hander Triston McKenzie. So far, Gil has been able to make his extreme combination of strikeouts and walks work – that’s because he’s done well at suppressing hard contact. He surrendered three home runs in his first 49 innings and has the ball tracking metrics to match. According to Statcast, Gil’s 30.6% hard hit rate (i.e., the percentage of balls with an exit velocity of over 95 mph) is in the top 10 percentile.
It is yet to be determined whether or not Gil will be able to sustain such a complicated balance. At the very least, it appears he will force the Yankees to have some interesting conversations if and when Cole is ready to return to an otherwise stacked rotation. But Gil isn’t the only young pitcher making noise (good or bad) in the majors. Below, we highlight four other arms worth monitoring.
Imagine being told a few summers ago that Detroit’s second-best starting pitcher wouldn’t be Casey Mize or Matt Manning, but the player they got back in the Daniel Norris trade. (For the well-adjusted people in the crowd who don’t remember the deal, the Tigers sent Norris to the Brewers for Olson at the 2021 deadline; it wasn’t seen at the time as a momentous occasion.)
Since then, Olson has put together nearly a full season of big league starts for the Tigers, accumulating an ERA+ of 127 and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 3.00. He has a four-pitch arsenal: a mid-90s four-seamer, a mid-80s slider, a changeup and a sinker; sometimes he throws a curveball at lefties to keep them honest.
Either way, Olson is a throwback in this era of lofty shooting. He located his four-seamer in the bottom half of the zone more than 60% of the time, the highest rate among starting pitchers. He also dominated the slider position down and away and let his changeup fall below the zone. These secondary pitches are key to his arsenal. He generated over 40% errors on both, and they were rated more favorably than his fastball variations when judged by pitch quality models.
More important than how Olson does it is what he did. Since a disastrous start to open the season against the Pirates, he has put together a six-game streak in which he has allowed two earned runs or less in each half. That span includes him shutting out the Yankees and Marlins and holding the Rangers, Twins, Royals and Guardians to a total of five earned runs in 24 total innings.
The Tigers need to nail down their lineup if they want to reach the postseason for the first time since 2014. The rotation, on the other hand? It’s all solved. Keep running Tarik Skubal, Olson and your other starters out there.
Angels, as a rule, don’t have many positives to feel good about. Soriano is one of the exceptions. He opened the season in the bullpen but quickly moved into the rotation. In seven starts since then, he has accumulated a 3.58 ERA and a strikeout-to-walk ratio a hair above 2.00.
Soriano took an unconventional path here. Obsessive readers will remember him as the top pick in the Rule 5 draft a few years ago. (The Pirates later returned him to the Angels before he could even make a single appearance for the club in the regular season.) Here’s what we wrote at the time:
Soriano underwent Tommy John surgery last February. The lost season and elbow scar haven’t deterred the Pirates, who may even see it as an advantage: The more time he misses because of rehab, the less time they have to keep him on the active roster. When healthy, he has a hot fastball and a promising catch that can serve in relief. Soriano’s poor command (more than five walks per nine innings as a pro) limits his ceiling.
Much of this remains true. Soriano’s fastball has averaged 90 mph this season, and his knuckle curve has generated a noise rate north of 40 percent while serving as his primary offering. You might think we’d like to remove the comment about his command limiting his ceiling, but to some extent it’s still relevant: His seasonal walk rate (12.1%) would rank as the fourth highest in MLB if he qualified.
The problem is, well, a lot of pitchers with walk problems are fine these days. Four of the pitchers with the top five walk rates this season have an ERA of 3.33 or less. That doesn’t mean you should to want their shooters distributing free passes left and right; This means that there are worse fates than a base in balls and that some skill sets seem capable of minimizing damage.
Soriano, meanwhile, generates an extreme amount of ground balls and an above-average double play rate. We’d like to see more from him before we feel confident he’s built for the long term as a starting pitcher, but it’s probably fair to write that we sold him short a few winters ago.
It wasn’t long ago that Brown was considered a quality prospect. He debuted in 2022 and turned heads — not just with some sharp performances out of the bullpen, but because his delivery was similar to teammate Justin Verlander’s. Unfortunately, his performances since then have mirrored, not imitated, Verlander’s. Over 40 starts since the start of last season, Brown has compiled an ERA+ of 73 and surrendered 1.6 home runs per nine innings.
Brown has been doing a little better lately: He entered May with an ERA near 10, but in three subsequent appearances he has posted a 4.40 ERA with more than two strikeouts per walk.
We wish there was something to point to and say, “this is the weakest link in Brown’s game.” At this moment, this is not possible. Batters have been hitting his four-seam boat, hitting his curveball, hitting his cutter and hitting his slider. The only pitch among his five most-used offerings that hasn’t yielded an average over .300 is his splitter. That’s a tough way to do business.
To Brown’s credit, he continues to experiment to find the ideal mix of tones. For stretches this season, he has used each the cutter, curveball and slider as his primary secondary offering. He hasn’t found the answer yet, but I hope he’s on the right track – and that he can remind people sooner rather than later why he was once seen as such a promising arm.
Miller has been a huge piece in a Mariners rotation that ranks in the top 10 in team ERA. He enters Monday with a 3.08 ERA (120 ERA+) and a 3.25 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his first nine starts, ensuring he continues to be a huge asset for the team. Mariners player development. Remember, Miller was a fourth-round pick coming out of college, having compiled a 4.45 ERA in his draft year.
Miller does most of his work with three pitches: a four-seam and mid-90s sinker, as well as a low-80s splitter. He will occasionally throw out a sweeper or a slider, but these three offerings account for more 80% of his shots so far. The four-seam boat, in particular, has been effective for Miller; he generated a 31% whiff rate on his heater, one of the highest rates among beginners.
What makes Miller’s fastball so difficult to control? Mid-90s speed doesn’t hurt. If we had to identify a single dynamic, however, we would cheat and say it is the optical illusion created by the marriage between the tone’s innate rising action and its low release point. To put this in perspective, here is a complete list of pitchers with a release point under 70 inches whose fastball features more inducible vertical break than Miller’s 18.3 inches:
It’s good company to keep. If you haven’t watched Miller’s start yet, make a point of doing so this summer. If not, your first exposure to him could be this postseason.
