Top Yankees Prospect’s Best Shot at MLB Time Might Be in a New Role

One of the biggest highlights of each year’s spring training games is getting to see each team’s top prospects perform against legitimate big leaguers. This serves as a test before they’re ready for the full challenge of transitioning to the major leagues, and often, these games serve as the first time we see some of these players in front of Statcast systems.

This spring, the baseball world has been treated to a plethora of impressive young arms. From fireballers such as Bubba Chandler to the professional debuts of players like Kade Anderson, we’ve seen a lot of notable performances early in the spring.

Of all these impressive performances, one American League East arm has stood above the rest: New York Yankees flamethrower Carlos Lagrange.

Although he’s thrown under 80 innings in Double-A, Lagrange has handled multiple legitimate major leaguers with ease so far this spring. With his impressive showing on the mound, he’s quickly put himself into discussions as another elite option for the Yankees later this year.

Contrary to popular belief, his biggest impact in the big leagues may not be as a starting pitcher, but rather as a high-leverage reliever. Let’s break down what this may look like, and where Lagrange is best fit to impact the 2026 New York Yankees.

Lagrange’s Dominant Spring

Before truly examining what his future role may look like, we first must talk about how dominant Lagrange has looked on the mound so far this spring.

Across his 9.2 innings pitched in big league camp so far this spring, Lagrange has pitched to a 0.93 ERA, 0.72 WHIP, and he’s racked up nine strikeouts to just three walks. Opponents are also currently hitting a mind-blowing .125 against him, and he’s left over 90% of runners on base.

While this is pretty impressive on its own, the main part of his game that’s caught the eyes of the baseball world this spring is his velocity.

As of the time I’m writing this, there have only been 12 pitches thrown at 102 MPH or harder in spring training. Of these 12 pitches, eight have been thrown by Lagrange, showing just how eye-popping his velocity has been.

In fact, taking things one step further, only one pitch has been clocked in above 103 MPH this spring. You guessed it, that singular pitch was tossed by none other than Carlos Lagrange.

In addition to this, Lagrange has shown off his very good slider and changeup, which have both shown disgusting results. For example, he threw a 93 MPH changeup in his outing against the Detroit Tigers, which had an absurd amount of arm-side movement.

Carlos Lagrange showed off his filthy arsenal today against the Tigers.

Our #64 prospect topped out at 102.4 today on the mound 🤯
pic.twitter.com/XIJVrzL710

— The Call Up | An MLB Prospect Podcast (@The_CallUpPod) February 21, 2026

There’s been no question surrounding how talented he’s looked this spring. Even though it’s an incredibly small sample size, few pitchers are showcasing this level of stuff, period, let alone in March.

A Potential Back-End Fireballer

On Friday morning, ESPN insider Jeff Passan published a story breaking down a preview of the upcoming season. In this story, he broke down interesting stories for each team across the league, and when he got to the Yankees, he brought up a fascinating point for Lagrange.

“Until he’s summoned to the big leagues, Lagrange will start games, but if he arrives this year, he could join David Bednar and Camilo Doval to form Nasty Boys 2.0, a bullpen defined by extreme levels of velocity,” Passan said regarding Lagrange.

If the Yankees choose to eventually take the bullpen route with the 23-year-old, he would come together to form a dominant back-end of the bullpen. In recent memory, we’ve seen dominant closers often feature dominant fastballs, as he possesses, and they’ve had a ton of success in high-leverage roles.

Remember when I mentioned that Lagrange had thrown eight of the 12 pitches clocked in over 102 MPH this spring? Three of the four pitches not thrown by him belong to Padres’ right-hander Mason Miller, who could be an interesting comparison to Lagrange.

Similar to Lagrange, Miller’s arsenal features one of the fastest heaters in the game, a disgusting slider, and a pretty solid changeup. It’s pretty crazy just how closely their repertoires are to one another, which could mean a bright future is on the horizon for Lagrange in this role.

After all, through his first three seasons, Miller has struck out nearly 40% of the batters he’s faced, maintained an ERA of 2.82, and he’s saved 50 games along the way. The crazy part? Lagrange has a deeper arsenal than Miller.

When talking about his arsenal, I mentioned that Miller throws a changeup, but I didn’t mention how often he utilizes the pitch. Through his three-year career, Miller has only tossed 84 changeups, including just 22 last season.

Lagrange, on the other hand, regularly utilizes his changeup quite often, as it’s shown flashes of being a quality offering for him at the big league level.

Admittedly, comparing Lagrange to Miller is a very bold thing to do, as it places lofty expectations on the right-hander, to say the least.

However, the point of making that comparison was to show that pitchers that have a similar archetype to Lagrange exist and have dominated in recent memory. Especially with Lagrange having the slightly deeper arsenal of a starting pitcher, he could do very well in a late-inning role with this repertoire.

Especially if Lagrange can join Bednar and Doval by taking this route, we could quickly see a three-headed monster form in New York, one that could essentially end games in the seventh inning.

When Can We Expect Lagrange to Debut?

Now that we’ve taken a deeper look into the pitcher Lagrange could be if things go as planned, this raises another question: When could we see him actually make his debut?

In all honesty, there’s a strong chance he pitches legitimate innings for the Yankees down the stretch in 2026, whether this is in the rotation or not. He could very easily take a leap like Cam Schlittler did in 2025.

As it currently stands, it’s not unrealistic to say Lagrange immediately starts the year in Triple-A Scranton. Even though he only notched 78.1 innings in Double-A last season, they were quite impactful, as he pitched to a 3.22 ERA during this span.

Only time will tell as to whether or not we actually see Lagrange make an impact this year, but the odds seem to be in his favor. If he does, don’t be surprised if he’s recording high-leverage outs from the bullpen in the 2026 MLB Postseason.

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