The Yankees learned a worrying piece of news on the injury front, receiving confirmation Monday that Luis Gil had suffered a Grade 2 strain of his right lat. The 26-year-old will be shut down from throwing for the next six weeks. He will likely require a full spring training’s worth of time to build up after being cleared to throw, meaning Gil is staring down at least a three-month absence. Luis Severino missed five months with the same injury in 2019 while Clarke Schmidt sat out for over three months last season with a similar ailment to give a pair of relevant comparisons for a prospective recovery timetable.

It would be a major blow for any team to lose the reigning AL Rookie of the Year. Gil went 15-7 in 29 starts with a 3.50 ERA, 4.14 FIP, and 171 strikeouts in 151.2 innings to win the prestigious award, and now the Yankees have to find a replacement in the rotation until May at the earliest. The Yankees have already traded away Nestor Cortes and Cody Poteet this offseason, which would seemingly leave Marcus Stroman as the next man up. However, I would like to lobby for top pitching prospect Will Warren to leapfrog Stroman and be given this opportunity.

Warren was selected by the Yankees in the eighth round of the 2021 MLB Draft and has since ascended to become the organization’s No. 1 pitching prospect according to several publications. His kitchen sink arsenal is seen as the most MLB-ready, with multiple pitches he has confidence to throw for strikes or for whiffs. While he struggled to a 10.32 ERA in six major league appearances last season, he looks like a pitcher transformed in camp this spring.

The 25-year-old righty has been the talk of camp so far. He’s made three appearances this spring, allowing one run on two hits and two walks with 11 strikeouts in eight innings. Austin Wells wasn’t scheduled to start playing in games until March, but he lobbied Aaron Boone to start a late-February exhibition explicitly for the opportunity to catch and establish a rapport with Warren.

Boone was similarly effusive in his praise for the young righty, comparing his aggression in the zone and confidence in his ability to that of Clarke Schmidt. Yet there is a different starting pitcher whom the Yankees recently developed who I feel is a much better comparison for Warren in terms of arsenal, approach, and mechanics: Michael King.

Will Warren vs. Michael King, Mechanics. pic.twitter.com/yUpDY3qnt2

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) February 26, 2025

The more I watch Warren pitch, the more I’m convinced that he is King 2.0. Both pitchers’ best offering is a nasty sweeper with almost two feet of horizontal movement away from righties. Both possess a sinker whose lateral movement makes it a called-strike weapon on the glove-side edge of the zone. Both have worked hard over the last few seasons to develop a changeup as a legitimate out pitch, King’s becoming elite by MLB standards in 2024 and Warren’s looking encouragingly sharp in the small sample he has thrown this spring. Neither was a high draft pick, instead taking advantage of the developmental resources available to them in the minor league system to bloom in their mid-20s.

With the obvious small sample size caveat, I’d like to go over the improvements we’ve seen from Warren this spring that provide confidence he could be successful in a major league rotation. We’ll start with the sinker, Warren adding about three inches of horizontal movement relative to last season. This additional lateral run in on right-handed hitters carries the ball that much farther away from the barrel of the bat, which should mitigate some of the hard-hit issues he ran into.

The four-seamer is the fastball that intrigues me more. He has added about a half-tick more velocity as well as an extra inch of induced vertical break. That might not seem like much, but that added inch of rise could be the difference between a home run and a harmless fly ball. I’ve spoken before on the site about the importance of possessing two distinct fastballs — something that King rode to success as a starter — and there’s an opportunity for Warren to glean similar benefits.

The key is in how similar the four-seamer and sinker look out of the hand, effectively indistinguishable for even the most discerning hitters. Because the four-seamer stays on plane while the sinker dives downward, a hitter expecting a four-seamer will likely whiff over the top of a sinker or ground it into the dirt while a hitter expecting a sinker will likely whiff underneath a four-seamer or sky a popup.

In addition to the improvements in velocity and movement, there’s been a philosophy shift with the way Warren deploys it, now unafraid to challenge any batter in the zone with the pitch in any count. The pitch has legitimate strikeout potential in the zone against major league hitters, as evidenced by Warren’s most recent spring start against the Phillies.

At the risk of getting overly excited about a pair of spring results, he just blew these two in-zone four-seamers right by Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber for strikeouts. There’s even room for Warren’s four-seamer to surpass King’s. King throws his about one mph harder, but Warren averages about 300 RPM more in spin rate. If he can adjust his finger positioning to stay a little more on top of the ball at release, he could see the pitch’s spin efficiency tick up from 79%, thus adding even more rising life to the pitch. And for a pitcher who throws from a relatively low release height, this added induced vertical movement would play up even more.

Warren has also brought back a curveball that he scrapped in 2023, trusting the encouragement of the pitching coaches who feel it would be beneficial to add a slow pitch to his repertoire, thus widening the velocity band that hitters have to be cognizant of. When it comes to the changeup, the improvement has more to do with his conviction when throwing the pitch rather than improvements to its physical characteristics (velocity, movement, etc.) He is trusting the movement of the pitch, allowing him to find a consistent release point to command the low, arm-side quadrant of the zone.

When it comes to the options to replace Gil, Warren already has a higher ceiling this season than Stroman. However, pitching ability is not the only factor at play. The Yankees would love to avoid Stroman’s 2026 option vesting should he pitch 140 innings in 2025, and keeping him out of the rotation is the best way to do that. There is already unease between Stroman and the front office given the latter’s public intent to trade him this winter, Stroman holding out of the first two days of spring training, and it might be best not to have a malcontent on the team.

Unfortunately, this may all be a moot point — even if Warren gets the nod to replace Gil, we have no idea how Schmidt’s cranky back will progress this spring, and there’s a very real possibility both Warren and Stroman are members of the MLB rotation to start the season. If Schmidt is good to go by Opening Day, I hope it’s Warren over Stroman to cover Gil’s absence. He’s very likely the better pitcher at this point of their careers, and as a potential part of the Yankees’ long-term plans, it would benefit Warren to cut his teeth against big league pitching and get as much experience under his belt as possible.