Yankees 2024 ROTY Luis Gil threw live BP Friday at Triple-A — first hitters faced since a May shoulder IL. His 2026 stat line before the injury raises a harder question than the shoulder itself.

Luis Gil threw a live batting practice session Friday at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, per Gary Phillips of the New York Daily News — the first time the 2024 AL Rookie of the Year has faced hitters since being placed on the seven-day minor-league injured list in early May with right shoulder inflammation.

That's the fact. Here's the number that makes it complicated.

Before the May IL, Gil had made four MLB starts and posted a 10.6% strikeout rate. In 2024, when he won the hardware, he struck out 26.8% of the batters he faced. That's not a modest step back; it's a 60% collapse in his primary weapon. Exit velocity against him jumped from 89.1 mph in 2024 to 92.2 mph this spring. His hard-contact rate climbed from 37.4% to 46.8%. His FIP was 8.38 before the shoulder sent him to the IL. The four-seamer that made him untouchable during his ROTY campaign — the pitch that bores in at the top of the zone and disappears on right-handed hitters — had already stopped working before he ever went on the shelf.

The shoulder inflammation may explain all of it. That's entirely possible: a pitcher throwing through shoulder trouble often loses spin, loses extension, loses the ability to deceive at the point of release. If the inflammation drove the stuff loss, and Friday's session revealed the pitch coming back, then Gil isn't a write-off — he's a genuine second-half reclamation asset. But if the shoulder heals cleanly and the strikeout rate stays at 10%, the Yankees have a deeper structural problem than a mechanical timeline.

CBS Sports reported Friday that "a return to game action seems imminent, but it's unlikely Gil will be an option for the Yankees anytime soon." He'd need at least one rehab start before the club could realistically activate him, and the trade deadline closes August 3 — well before any realistic Gil timeline. He doesn't change their deadline calculus this week.

That context matters for how the front office reads the session. Max Fried returned from a bone bruise and shut out Pittsburgh on July 24. Clarke Schmidt threw one inning of live BP on July 18, still months from return. The rotation is stabilizing around Fried and whoever fills the back end; Gil is a longer horizon. What Friday's BP provides isn't roster relief — it's the first real data point on whether fixing the shoulder also fixed the pitcher.

He's 28, under team control through 2029, signed for $2.16M. The Yankees need that question answered, and they need the answer to be yes.