Yankees’ pitchers and catchers report today; who should you watch?

It’s the best time of year; baseball is officially back, and the Yankees will have pitchers and catchers officially report to their training facilities in Tampa today.

Most of the 40-man roster and some key prospects have already made the hike to Tampa, working out at Himes Field over the last few weeks ramping up.

The World Baseball Classic is less than a month away with plenty of representatives for multiple countries on this roster getting ready to make a deep run in the global event.

Pitchers are the most interesting players to watch this time of year as their changes and tweaks have more signal than looking at swing changes or Spring Training OPS.

With the Yankees’ bullpen having plenty of uncertainty and a crop of fascinating pitching prospects ready to take that next step, here are the names you should be paying closest attention to in camp.

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Will Cade Winquest Impress the Yankees Enough to Win a Bullpen Job?

Cade Winquest was ranked as the no. 11 prospect in the Yankees’ organization on my top 30, as the right-hander has all the chops to make their Major League bullpen out of camp.

He has a mid-90s fastball that can get up to 100 MPH as a starter, contracting his workload to a reliever role could result in his sitting velocity being closer to his career-best mark.

The shape of his fastball isn’t great, but his low release height and ability to get downhill well allows him to release the ball closer to the plate than most and create a flat approach angle at the top of the zone for whiffs.

It pairs well with his big looping curveball which he can use for whiffs or called strikes, and it’s why lefties had a sub-.600 OPS against him during the 2025 MiLB season.

His splitter is a solid offering as well and it’s a big swing-and-miss pitch down in the zone because of the aforementioned fastball, but I’m interested to see if there are any tweaks made there.

Winquest has a cutter and a sweeper he can mix in but neither pitch is considered a mainstay in his repertoire, and the Yankees could do some work with those pitches to make them more viable options.

I think the sweeper is low-hanging fruit given that Winquest tends to cut the baseball and has high spin rates, when he throws a sweeper it gets a good amount of depth and lateral movement with run-of-the-mill pitch velocity.

Another pitch type he could add is a sinker, which has been discussed already according to Gary Phillips of the New York Daily News all the way back in December.

There’s a chance that Cade Winquest becomes a five-pitch pitcher with firmly above-average stuff, which would lead me to wonder if the Yankees ever return him back to a starting role in 2027 or 2028.

This of course hinges on him making the 26-man roster; Winquest must remain on the active roster or the IL in order to remain with the Yankees, if he doesn’t he’ll get sent back to the Cardinals.

What Do the Yankees See With Paul Blackburn?

A failed starter who was picked up by the Yankees as a waiver claim before returning on a one-year $2 million deal, I wonder how Paul Blackburn looks in camp.

It seems a bit weird to care about what their uber-cheap reliever looks like, but they have made it clear they prefer him as a bullpen option.

When Luke Weaver did this ahead of the 2024 season there were noticable pitch shape changes especially to his fastball that you could have spotted in Tampa.

Going from a starter to a reliever could also allow Blackburn to contract his mix, Weaver went from throwing a ton of bad pitches to just focusing on the fastball-changeup-cutter, and I wonder what the Yankees will do here.

Does he really lean into the sinker-sweeper mix? Is there a four-seam reinassance with the changeup taking centerstage? I don’t deny allegations of being a weirdo who cares too much about these niche things.

The Yankees paid him not just to be a depth starter; there’s something they see here even if I currently don’t really see where Blackburn ends up making the leaps needed to be a plus bullpen arm.

I’ve only got part of the picture while the Yankees have the full painting, and I’ll be watching closely to see whether my suspicions were right or to see the missing pieces to the puzzle that I failed to put together.

Is Cam Schlittler Changing Things Up In 2026?

The Yankees found a no. 3 starter for their 2025 rotation by promoting Cam Schlittler midseason, and one could argue he was their no. 1 starter down the stretch.

His stuff is electric, sporting a four-seamer, sinker, cutter, and curveball in his mix with a sweeper that he abandoned early into his MLB tenure.

One of the biggest storylines to follow is whether he can effectively throw a changeup, a pitch the Yankees have been trying to help him nail down for years.

Last Spring Training he attempted to learn a splitter but that didn’t go well and they ultimately scrapped the idea, opting for a cutter instead which helped him take off.

Schlittler is still looking to add either a changeup or a splitter, and if he can add a pitch that drops with arm-side movement, his pitch plot should be complete.

I would also like to see him get that sweeper down, I really like the shape of this pitch and think it could be a big swing-and-miss pitch against right-handed batters.

His command seemed to create more issues than the shape of the pitch itself, but its also possible that it bleeds too much into the cutter shape to make the trade-off worthwhile.

Cam Schlittler’s sinker is another pitch to watch, if he can add some more tail to it and refine the shape we could be looking at a true weapon in his arsenal.

This is one of the nastiest pitchers in the game; his updated Stuff+ in Eno Sarris’ model is 107 which is where Trey Yesavage, Jesus Luzardo, Joe Ryan, and Jacob deGrom hover rounnd.

Does 2026 Become Luis Gil’s Resurgance? (Bandwagon)

Luis Gil is an odd pitcher to discuss because there have been points in time where he looked like one of the best pitchers on the planet and other times where he is quite literally unwatchable.

2025 was a bad year for Gil despite the shiny ERA; his Spring Training injury caused him to miss the first half and when he returned, his stuff didn’t look good.

Eno Sarris’ updated model has him as the only member of the current starting five to have a below-100 Stuff+ (98) as a result of losing velocity and ride on the fastball and his slider shape changing.

His Whiff% sat in the 20th Percentile (21.5%) while also having an 11th Percentile K% (16.8%), the right-hander will need to get healthy and find ways to rebound in both the stuff and command departments.

I need to see the 2024 velocity and fastball shape return because that alone would make a fairly substantial difference in how well he’d perform, but there’s something else I’m looking for in camp.

I think there needs to be a fourth pitch of sorts here, I’d prefer a second fastball since it would give him another zone-filler with good velocity with the already-existing release traits to have a pretty good shape.

Luis Gil should be able to throw a solid two-seam/sinker given how well he spins the ball into right-handed batters, and it would at least keep hitters off of his four-seamer.

During the 2025 season he had to throw his fastball 51% of the time, hitters knew what was coming early in counts and could either get ahead 2-0 to work a walk or swing early to put a ball in play and potentially do some damage.

If there’s a second fastball shape (or just a fourth pitch in general) it gives hitters more to think about early in counts and my faith in the right-hander would increase exponentially.

To get the Luis Gil back that the Yankees saw in 2024, there needs to be material change to his mix; if not, then I’d start soft-launching the idea of him being a reliever in the second half.