Ryan Garcia
It’s only Triple-A season right now with some more MiLB action on the way for the Yankees, and we’re breaking down some of the top-performing players of note.
Since the Scranton RailRiders have a ton of veterans, we’re emphasizing the exclaimer that we are only evaluating prospects on the team to keep it consistent with other levels.
To clarify; since this is only evaluating players who would be rookies if they came up to the big leagues tomorrow, Jasson Dominguez is not someone that will feature in this article.
You’ll get other pieces of content looking at his performances when it’s warranted, but with that out of the way, here are some of the top performances from the RailRiders in their first series of the season.
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Carlos Lagrange Looks Sharp in 1st Triple-A Start
The Yankees had something to watch on their off-day as Carlos Lagrange would make his first start at the Triple-A level in his professional career.
While the fastball velocity was down in the cold weather up in Buffalo, his control was pretty sharp as Lagrange threw up a goose egg in the walk column.
He did give up some loud contact which indicate that this was a situation where he was just able to find the zone but wasn’t able to hit his spots when he did attack the zone.
The stuff is so good that if he can do that he’ll be a pretty successful starting pitcher, and he was able to limit the Bisons to just one run with three strikeouts in four innings of work.
Sitting 97.9 MPH with 17 inches of ride, Lagrange mixed in sweepers, changeups, and sliders with those secondaries being where he got most of his whiffs.
This wasn’t a dominant performance but this is a good one to have in some poor weather at a level that Carlos Lagrange has never pitched at before, continuing to ride the momentum he built up during Spring Training.
Spencer Jones Continues to Do Spencer Jones Things
Spencer Jones struck out five times in 12 at-bats (38.5%) while having a .667 SLG% and hitting his first home run of the season over the weekend, are we surprised at this point?
This is what the left-handed outfielder is; lots of power that comes with plenty of whiffs, and you’re hoping that the Zone Contact% stops being uniquely horrible.
If that does ever happen, he should be up this season, if it does not, then I imagine the Yankees will continue to flirt with trading him at the deadline with the hopes of a team being intruiged by Jones’ upside.
It’s not exactly hurting his case that Munetaka Murakami (who has similar issues) just hit three home runs in his first three games, sometimes teams are reactionary.
The Yankees Might Have MLB-Caliber Relievers Sitting in Scranton
Harrison Cohen picked up two strikeouts in his first appearance of the 2026 season and I think there’s an interesting change that he’s made to counteract some of last year’s issues.
Strike-throwing was an issue for him last season and I think it’s why the Yankees chose to leave him off the 40-man roster, and I think by pushing more cutters he’s able to get more chases, he’s also able to get more whiffs.
This cutter is disgusting and he’s been running >50% usage on this pitch in Spring Training, the World Baseball Classic, and in this Triple-A outing.
I’m a fan of the changeup and the four-seamer does have some more ride than last year, but he might be able to ride that nasty cutter to a big-league bullpen job this summer.
Yovanny Cruz might get to the big leagues before May rolls around with the way his stuff looks, the fastball was sizzling at 99.2 MPH but that’s not even his best pitch.
I noted that his slider is the pitch that people should be paying close attention to and we saw him use that pitch 59.3% of the time with a 75% Whiff% in two innings of work.
This is a bullet slider with good velocity and it plays very well off of his four-seam fastball, the action that he creates with this pitch allows him to deceive both left-handed and right-handed hitters.
He’s flashed a splitter as well which has some interesting traits, but that breaking ball and elite-level velocity are enough to project a reliever outcome.
One name that shouldn’t go under the radar is Zach Messinger, who is throwing a much-improved four-seamer with 17 inches of ride at 95 MPH to headline a very deep mix.
He features a sinker, changeup, sweeper, and cutter with these pitches having good movement profiles, and he tossed 1.2 scoreless innings of work with a strikeout and no runners allowed.
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