Major League Baseball

Yankees' Luis Gil, Angels' Jo Adell top call-ups making a September splash

Updated Sep. 8, 2021 6:28 p.m. ET

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

September used to be a full-fledged prospect season. No more.

Limiting roster expansion to 28 players, instead of 40, in the service of a faster pace of play has delayed the arrival of some of the sport’s better young talents. But some prospects hoping to prove themselves are in the major leagues right now.

One week into the final month of the 2021 season, let’s take a look at five such players, some of whom, such as Los Angeles Angels outfielder Jo Adell, have been up before and others who are debuting now.

After a horrific 2020 dampened his top-10 prospect status, Adell is back in the big leagues and performing competently as the Angels play out the string with Mike Trout still on the injured list. Adell, a 22-year-old outfielder, lists a few reasons he has been better this year, among them a longer spring training and actual minor-league games to build on before his second big-league chance.

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But the biggest difference, he said, is in his approach. He is swinging at different types of pitches this season.

"I looked at stuff last year, when I felt at my worst, just trying to figure out why that was," Adell told FOX Sports. "It really just came down to the lack of preparation. With the way spring training was set up, I couldn’t really get what I needed to, and that wasn’t anyone’s fault. We had a protocol we had to follow. But getting into that rhythm of games is what baseball is, and a 60-game spread doesn’t tell the full story."

The data does. Adell is swinging at about the same number of strikes this year and chasing about the same percentage of balls. But not all strikes or balls are equal, and Statcast data shows that Adell is successfully targeting pitches up in the strike zone this year and declining pitches low in the zone and below it.

"The idea behind this is not just to get a strike and hit it," Adell said. "[It's to] know yourself well enough to know what you hit well — not what you think you hit well but what you actually hit well — and focus on getting that pitch in that location."

His shift in perspective has translated to a strikeout rate almost half of his 2020 mark, more balls in play and more RBIs. This month in particular, he has started to hit for power. It was Adell who broke up San Diego Padres lefty Blake Snell’s no-hit attempt Tuesday with a two-run single. Overall, Adell is hitting .400 in September with two home runs.

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Here are four more call-ups to keep an eye on this month.

Luis Gil, RHP, New York Yankees

Gil will start Wednesday, with New York once more turning to him in need of innings. He delivered last month with three scoreless outings to begin his major-league career. It has been a meteoric rise for the 23-year-old Dominican, who had thrown only three games in full-season baseball before this year. Then the Yankees aggressively promoted him to Double-A to begin the 2021 season, and he rewarded them with seven great starts, prompting a promotion to Triple-A.

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There, the strikeouts stayed high, as they have so far in the majors. Gil is an exceptionally hard thrower for a starter, even a modern one. To sustain this success, his command will require refinement, but at this early stage of his professional career, that remains well within the realm of possibility.

This next start for Gil will be of supreme importance to the Yankees, as they are facing the rising Blue Jays and in danger of losing their hold on a wild-card slot. If the Yankees do make the playoffs, they might have Gil to thank.

Nate Pearson, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays

Once Adell’s rival on the top-10 prospect lists before the 2020 season, Pearson, too, has lost some of that sheen, owing more to injuries than anything else. He has hardly pitched since the 2019 season.

Still, he earned a shot in the Blue Jays’ bullpen this month, and he possesses the sort of arm that could make him a relief ace in short order, down the stretch or in the postseason. Heck, he fulfilled that role pretty successfully in his one chance during the 2020 playoffs.

Pearson stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 250 pounds. He can throw 100 mph with sharp breaking stuff. As a reliever, at least, all he needs to do is approach the zone. In the offseason, then, Toronto can decide if his 2022 future will be in the bullpen or the rotation.

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Mike Baumann, RHP, Baltimore Orioles

Baumann debuted Tuesday with an impressive outing against the Kansas City Royals. The Orioles’ painstakingly long rebuild has yielded precious few gems so far, and Baumann is not projected to be a star, but a mid-rotation arm would be a boon for Baltimore at this stage.

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Baumann, who turns 26 on Friday, impressed in spring training before an elbow injury delayed him. He’s healthy now and represents what the Orioles hope is one of the first new pieces of their next contending team.

There are others, too, but the Orioles are electing not to use up their service time just yet. Catcher Adley Rutschman, raking at Triple-A, will be in Baltimore next year, surely.

Keibert Ruiz, C, Washington Nationals

Ruiz has been a different kind of hitter this year, far more powerful than in the past and more powerful than even the scouts most bullish on him projected. He has hit 21 home runs this season after never having hit more than 12 before.

That doesn’t mean the power is not here to stay. Ruiz just turned 23, and he has always demonstrated above-average command of the strike zone. It’s that skill and added lower-half strength that fueled his Triple-A surge, first with the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Oklahoma City affiliate and then, after the Max Scherzer and Trea Turner trade, the Nationals’ Rochester affiliate.

Wherever he is, Ruiz continues to walk about as much as he strikes out. That alone has value — a lot of it, so long as he remains a solid defensive catcher.

Clearly, Washington is hoping to sort out this month how much power Ruiz can produce at the major-league level. So far, the answer is very little, but he has time yet to prove he can keep up his progress. If he can, he has star potential.

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He most recently covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic. Previously, he spent five years covering the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.