TAMPA, Fla. — The Yankees sent Carlos Lagrange to minor league camp on Thursday. That was the easy part. What comes next is the harder conversation, and it centers on two pitchers who were never supposed to feel this kind of pressure in March.
Luis Gil and Ryan Weathers entered spring training as locks for the back end of the Yankees rotation. Five weeks later, a 22-year-old flamethrower with zero innings above Double-A has them both looking over their shoulders.
How Lagrange changed the equation
Lagrange arrived in Tampa as a developmental arm. He was the Yankees’ No. 2 pitching prospect, ranked No. 79 overall by MLB Pipeline, and nobody expected him near the Opening Day discussion.
Then he started pitching. In four Grapefruit League outings, Lagrange posted a 0.66 ERA with 13 strikeouts and four walks in 13.2 innings. He threw 11 consecutive scoreless innings across his final three appearances. His fastball sat in the high 90s and touched 102 mph. The only run he allowed all spring came on a solo home run by Detroit’s Corey Julks on Feb. 21.
Yankees starter Max Fried, entering his 10th big league season, said he had never seen anything like it.
“I’ve never seen velocity like that consistently and doing it over a bunch of innings,” Fried said. “He works really hard. He’ll definitely impact this team.”
Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, back from Tommy John surgery, put it more bluntly.
“It’s like, silly. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Cole said. “It’s wild. I’m just blown away by the velocity every time.”
Gil and Weathers now face real consequences
Here is the part of the Lagrange story that matters most for the Yankees right now. His demotion did not erase the standard he set. If anything, it raised the bar for the pitchers who stayed.
Weathers, the hard-throwing left-hander the Yankees acquired from Miami in the offseason, has been roughed up this spring. His ERA climbed to 11.68 after he allowed seven runs in three innings against the Blue Jays in an 11-0 Yankees loss in Dunedin on Wednesday. That outing came on the same day the club sent Lagrange down, a coincidence that did not go unnoticed.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said he did not see that game because he was managing the split squad to a 5-4 win over the Orioles at Steinbrenner Field.
“I heard they got some runs,” Boone said. “I heard very early in the dugout. Heard like a lot of balls finding holes and stuff. So I have not dug into the outing much, but heard it was OK.”
Gil’s situation carries just as much urgency for the Yankees. The 2024 AL Rookie of the Year has posted a 6.28 ERA across five spring starts, including a seven-run outing against the Tigers. His final spring start came Friday night against Baltimore. The Yankees do not need a fifth starter until mid-April, meaning Gil’s roster spot is not guaranteed when the club opens Wednesday in San Francisco.
“There’s so many areas that he’s moving in a really good direction,” Boone said of Gil. “It’s just about continuing to build on the velocity and the shape of the pitches. The reality is he’s not far off, but we want to see him continue to improve.”
Boone downplays the spring numbers
The Yankees manager insisted he is not making decisions based on Grapefruit League stat lines alone.
“I don’t put a lot of stock in numbers in spring,” Boone said. “You want to see guys, are they in line with who they are? Or, in the case of young players, are they developing? Are they getting better at some of the deficiencies they have?”
Still, the contrast between Lagrange’s 0.66 ERA and what Gil and Weathers produced this spring is hard to ignore. The Yankees front office considered keeping Lagrange on the big league roster, which tells you everything about how seriously the organization took what he showed.
“I don’t know if we were ever going to, like, break camp with him,” Boone said. “But I would say we’ve at least talked about it, like what he’s done the last six weeks definitely made us think maybe he’s closer than we think.”
Lagrange heads to Triple-A with a message
The Yankees are sending Lagrange to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to continue building up as a starter. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told the New York Post that Lagrange had “been fantastic” and had “opened a lot of eyes” this spring.
“I just knew before this spring started that he would be the talk of camp because he throws 100-plus,” Cashman said.
Yankees skipper Boone delivered a clear message to the 22-year-old while reassigning him: stay patient.
“I would not be surprised if he is impacting us early, middle, later part of the season,” Boone said. “I don’t know, but I can just tell you, we’re all very excited about his continued development and what we think he could be to our team at some point.”
For Gil and Weathers, the message is different. Lagrange is now one phone call away. The Yankees have a pitching prospect who dominated big league hitters all spring, waiting for someone to give him an opening. As Satchel Paige once said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” For the back end of the Yankees rotation, that something now has a name.
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