It’s awards week for Major League Baseball. The NL Rookie of the Year was a straightforward race, with Pittsburgh Pirates pitching phenom Paul Skenes winning the honor. However, it was more of a contest in the American League between outfielder Colton Cowser and Luis Gil. The New York Yankees starter won the junior circuit’s Rookie of the Year award after finishing last season with a 3.50 ERA over 151.2 innings while accruing 2.2 fWAR.
Minnesota Twins fans might not remember Gil’s name. However, he was briefly in Minnesota’s farm system. However, because the Twins traded him at 19, Gil never stuck around long enough to crack any top-40 lists as a prospect.
The Twins traded him to the Yankees in March 2018 for outfielder Jake Cave after New York designated Cave for assignment during spring training. Six years later, it’s hard to see the trade as anything other than a loss for the Twins.
However, was the swap exactly as lopsided as it currently feels?
First, let’s look at Cave. The Twins sought outfield depth behind Byron Buxton, Max Kepler, and Eddie Rosario. Cave debuted in 2018 and offered a low-cost team-controlled outfielder for the next few years.
Looking back on the trade, that’s what the Twins got. Cave was a league-average hitter in Minnesota with a .235/.297/.411 slash line with 33 home runs, 92 wRC+, and 1.4 fWAR in 335 games over five seasons with the Twins. Compare that to the 2.7 total fWAR Gil has already stacked up, and it’s easy to declare that New York got the better end of this deal.
Cave offered defensive value to the team as Buxton’s understudy in 2018, when he made 70 appearances in center field after Buxton was injured. However, since that season, he only played 68 games in center field. Instead, he played 187 games as a corner outfielder in Minnesota from 2019 to 2022. Cave was a league-average player but never was able to produce at a higher rate than that for the Twins.
Despite being named the American League’s top rookie, Gil has played in 36 big-league games since 2021. Gil made six starts with a 3.07 ERA as a 23-year-old in 2021 before needing Tommy John surgery only four innings into his first start in 2022. Elbow issues caused Gil to miss the rest of 2022 and the 2023 season. It almost felt like a wash when the Yankees fast-tracked Gil to the big leagues, followed by his elbow surgery, until he broke out this year.
In hindsight, the Twins never would have made this deal. A quality starting pitcher is worth much more than a league-average platoon outfielder. Nobody is debating that. However, Gil was not a surefire pitching prospect for the Twins. All he had on his professional pitching record was 14 starts in the Dominican League, where he posted a 2.59 ERA that winter.
Teenage pitchers rarely develop into major leaguers, given the injury risk. The Yankees were about to cut Cave before Minnesota traded for him. They may not have been able to acquire him if he hit the waiver wire. The Twins could nab an outfielder while the Yankees simultaneously cleared a 40-man roster spot with a lottery ticket.
It’s hard to ignore a trade that sent the future Rookie of the Year to the Yankees. However, the Twins were more concerned with the 2018 season than the 2024 campaign. Still, the trade hurt the team because they didn’t have Gil in their organization.
With Gil in the majors, the Twins likely have enough starting pitching to weather Joe Ryan and Chris Paddack’s injuries. It also would have given Minnesota enough depth to expedite Louie Varland’s transition to the bullpen earlier in the season.
Gil only throws three pitches: a four-seam fastball, a slider, and a changeup. The fastball is his least effective pitch despite the 96.6 MPH average velocity, and his changeup keeps hitters honest. However, he makes the biggest impact with his slider. According to Baseball Savant, his slider has a plus-9 run value, and his breaking ball run value is in the 94th percentile in baseball.
Ryan, Bailey Ober, and other pitchers have developed plus fastballs in Minnesota’s system. With a fully-developed fastball paired with his slider, Gil would have been a much-needed Twins rotation that had two rookie pitchers finish the season. Unlike Gil, Zebby Matthews and David Festa had no major league experience coming into the season.
Trading Gil will likely continue to look worse as the years go on. People will fire off “didn’t need him” posts on social media whenever Gil has a solid outing for the Yankees. Still, teams across baseball make trades like the Gil-for-Cave to shed a current roster spot for the promise of a moldable young minor leaguer. They’ll still swap raw, low-minors players for MLB-ready ones because of the certainty of prospects on the cusp of the majors.
The Twins have been on both ends of these deals recently. The most prominent example is when Minnesota sent fan-favorite infielder Eduardo Escobar to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Jhoan Duran, outfielder Ernie De La Trinidad, and outfielder Gabriel Maciel. Duran was only a 20-year-old starting pitcher for High-A Kane County in Arizona’s system. However, the Twins converted him to the bullpen. Since then, he has become one of the most dominant closers in baseball, with a 2.59 ERA and 58 saves since 2022.
After the 2022 season, the Twins traded infielder Gio Urshela to the Los Angeles Angels for Alejandro Hidalgo. The 19-year-old pitching prospect posted a 5.28 ERA in 21 games for the High-A Cedar Rapids Kernels in 2023 and didn’t pitch in 2024 due to a right shoulder injury. Sometimes these trades work, and sometimes they don’t. It’s always a gamble to rely on teenagers and other low-minors players to become anything at the big league level, let alone a Rookie of the Year.
All trades are gambles. Sometimes, in the case of the Gil-Cave swap, it’s a misstep. Other times, the Escobar-Duran swap sets your franchise up with a building block player for the foreseeable future. With the benefit of hindsight, we know the value Cave provided the Twins. Meanwhile, Gil’s is growing stronger every year. The trade is undoubtedly a loss for the Twins, but the front office has to move forward and find its own Luis Gil or maybe its next Jhoan Duran.
