Early on this season, it looked like the Yankees had a prime AL Rookie of the Year candidate in Luis Gil.
As the race heads down the home stretch, Austin Wells is making a strong case to take home the award himself.
The Yankees are focused on bigger things this month as they try to pin down the AL East, but the emergence of Wells as a two-way force and cleanup hitter has played a key role in the team’s success while putting him in position to potentially claim the AL Rookie of the Year.
“Absolutely,” fellow catcher Jose Trevino said Tuesday. “He’s doing a great job on both sides of the baseball. I think that’s very important, and I think it’s underrated what he’s doing right now, especially behind the plate. I think it’s going very unnoticed, but it should be definitely worth the conversation of Rookie of the Year.”
Entering Tuesday, Wells led all AL Rookies in fWAR at 3.7, ahead of Orioles outfielder Colton Cowser (3.4), Red Sox outfielder Wilyer Abreu (3.0) and Gil (2.5).
He was batting .252 with a .780 OPS and 13 home runs across 100 games, but those numbers have been climbing over the last three months as Wells had hit .284 with a .890 OPS and 12 home runs over his last 64 games (51 starts) since June 6.
That Wells’ bat is thriving should not necessarily be a surprise — it has long been expected since the Yankees drafted him with their first-round pick in 2020.
But the 25-year-old has made real gains defensively this season, as he entered Tuesday ranked third in Baseball Savant’s Catcher Framing Runs and fourth in Fielding Run Value, which takes into account throwing, blocking and framing.
“It’s impressive what he’s doing because it’s his first year fully in the big leagues, he’s managing a pitching staff that’s probably in high demand of what they want to do, but apart from that he’s also concentrating on helping the team out and winning games by hitting,” Nestor Cortes said.
“His pitch-calling has been really good, too. I feel like the catchers have one job and it’s to call the game. If you hit, you hit. So by him doing both really well — and from April to September, I feel like his pitch-calling and his leadership behind the plate for the pitchers to trust him and follow him have been really good.”
Cortes said he recently joked with Wells that if he hit five or six more home runs in the first month or two of the season (he only had one by the end of May), he would have AL Rookie of the Year locked up.
But Wells has made up for a quiet start as he takes on the larger share of the catching job, taking consistently quality at-bats and producing big moments like the one on Monday when he crushed a three-run home run in the seventh inning that put the Yankees ahead for good against the Royals.
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There is still a case to be made for Gil, who will take a 3.24 ERA into Wednesday’s start while striking out 151 in 130 ²/₃ innings and allowing three runs or fewer in 20 of his 25 outings.
The same goes for Cowser, who has cooled off some of late but entered Tuesday batting .241 with a .759 OPS and 20 home runs in 137 games, and Abreu, who was batting .267 with a .830 OPS in 114 games.
But Wells’ value at a demanding position — no catcher has won Rookie of the Year since the Giants’ Buster Posey in 2010 — includes his steady presence behind the plate while guiding a veteran pitching staff and earning their trust over the course of the year.
The Yankees place a premium on the defense and game-calling that their catchers provide, making his offensive impact an added bonus.
“It’s a heavy responsibility to be a big-league catcher, let alone be a big-league catcher for the New York Yankees,” manager Aaron Boone said. “He’s handled all that really well and shown that ability from jump. Now we’ve really seen him start to become a force offensively, too.”
