While it felt fairly safe not to fault Brian Cashman after the dreaded Houston Astros chose to deal with the Chicago Cubs over the New York Yankees for Kyle Tucker, that might have been an unfairly generous assumption, according to one Yankees insider.
Luis Gil's shoulder injury, resulting in a six-week shutdown and plenty of rehab afterward, changed the Yankees' rotation picture on Monday afternoon. It also led to a deeper assessment of the offseason, when Gil was involved (to a heretofore unknown degree) in sell-high trade talks throughout the league.
It definitely seemed, to the untrained eye, like he was involved in the Yankees' pursuit of Tucker; their package was rumored to include both Gil and slugging top prospect George Lombard Jr. While we never learned anything tangible about the process after Tucker was dealt to Chicago, Gil's thankful Instagram story certainly hinted strongly that he'd felt he might get moved.
Given the Yankees' rivalry with Houston, it seemed more than likely that Jim Crane and the Astros had no intention of gifting a potential MVP rental to their bitter foes. Reasonable fans assumed Crane would choose the Yankees only as a last resort, and would attempt to bleed them dry in any negotiation. According to Bob Klapisch, though, that may not have been the case. The trusted Yankees insider wrote on Tuesday morning that Cashman "passed" on the chance to trade Gil for Tucker. If it's true that the Yankees walked away, only to be hit with predictable injury shrapnel before the season even began, "mistake" doesn't even begin to cover the assessment.
Klap
"Cashman passed on the chance to trade Gil to the Astros for outfielder Kyle Tucker in December. The GM valued the next five years of contract.... control over Gil, not to mention building around the American League’s Rookie of the Year."
Yankees' Kyle Tucker trade fell apart because Brian Cashman pulled Luis Gil, per Bob Klapisch
Hindsight is 20-20, but predicting that Gil (who missed 2023 after Tommy John surgery and wore down during 2024's stretch run) would be corrupted by injuries should be classified as foresight. In fact, selling high on Gil was so obvious that, in order to achieve comfort, we wrongly assumed that the Astros were at fault here.
If Cashman valued Gil's control over importing Tucker, extension or not, rather than realizing that April/May 2024 would likely be the top months of Gil's career (or any pitcher's career), that represents another hefty dose of malpractice. Picking the wrong favorites has long been a Cashman bugaboo. Now, all we can do is hope that this particular player can maintain a baseline of value during the next five years rather than receding off the map.
Tucker's a Cub. Because of that, Cody Bellinger's a Yankee. If you weren't comparing the two before Tuesday's bombshell, you certainly should be now.
