Inside the Yankees’ scouting and development of Luis Gil
NEW YORK — Travis Chapman, now the New York Yankees’ first-base coach, wrote two separate scouting reports on only one opposing player when he managed the organization’s 2017 Dominican Summer League team: then-Minnesota Twins pitching prospect Luis Gil. “We had pretty good players on that team,” Chapman said, “And the way they were taking swings on his fastball was totally different than pretty much any other pitcher I’d seen down there.” Seven years later, Gil has the sixth-best whiff rate on his fastball across MLB. When Fred Guerrero, then Minnesota’s director of Latin American scouting, first saw Gil pitch, the teenager weighed around 140 pounds and his fastball clocked in the mid-80s. “He kind of overpowered some guys and would flirt with the zone a little bit but he was not getting there consistently.” Since the DSL, command has always been Gil’s weakness.
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