Ryan Garcia
I often make mistakes in my analysis of the Yankees, it’s not uncommon to get things wrong and I’ll own them when I can.
Carlos Lagrange was ranked as the no. 4 prospect in the system ahead of the 2026 season, and that is nothing short of a complete miss of a ranking.
He is at worst the second-best prospect in this system and a slam-dunk top 30-40 propsect in the game in my opinion, there is a very real chance he could be a plus reliever on Opening Day.
With a power fastball that has elite movement headlining a mix with three excellent secondary pitches, Lagrange had just one word for the media when asked if he felt ready for the Major Leagues:
“Yeah”
Based on how the Yankees have been acting, they might be in lock-step with him.
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Why Carlos Lagrange Is a Game-Changer For the Yankees’ 2026 Pitching Staff
Carlos Lagrange brought the heat in his latest outing of Spring Training, sitting at 99.6 MPH on his four-seamer and striking out four batters while not allowing a single run.
His stuff is unbelievable, having excellent vertical movement on his heater which has made it a swing-and-miss pitch at the top of the zone.
Spring Training data isn’t very stable, but the 38.5% Whiff% and .236 xwOBACON indicate that not only did Lagrange miss bats at a high clip but he also induced harmless contact when batters did actually connect.
In fact he allowed just one barrel in the 33 batted balls he allowed, which is a product of how hard he’s throwing and how much his pitches move.
This is an elite-level pitch mix; we’ve mentioned numerous times in articles or podcasts that Lagrange has some of the best stuff in all of baseball and it’s not really an exaggeration.
His results in Spring Training are against mostly Double-A and Triple-A competition, but he’s dominating them in ways he did not when pitching at Somerset for the Yankees’ affiliate in Double-A last season.
This is a more polished pitcher than who we saw in 2025, attacking the zone at a ~45% clip according to Baseball Savant which is roughly where guys like Dylan Cease and Freddy Peralta are at right now.
Entering Spring Training I believed that Carlos Lagrange would need about half a season of MiLB action to even enter consideration for a call-up, now I’m not closed off to the idea that he could be a big-time piece right now.
The Yankees are going to give Carlos Lagrange almost every opportunity possible to start, which is why everyone expects him to start out in the Minor Leagues, but why hasn’t he been optioned yet?
In fact on their current Minor League roster, Lagrange is not there while Elmer Rodriguez and Ben Hess are. There’s something that just feels…interesting about this.
No one would bat an eye if the Yankees optioned him and it is what I still think they will do before March 25th, but they’ve been giving him innings when the team has numerous MLB arms competing for a bullpen spot right now.
The aforementioned Rodriguez, who already has a start in Triple-A, could have just as easily gotten that relief outing and there are certainly guys who have been optioned (Harrison Cohen, Dylan Coleman) that could be Major League ready.
You shouldn’t get your hopes up about him debuting in the big leagues this season, but it is a pretty loud indicator that the Yankees believe they have something special here.
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