Yankees' Carlos Lagrange sent down, but his eye-popping results put pressure on other starters

TAMPA, Fla. — The Yankees sent 22-year-old flamethrower Carlos Lagrange to the minor leagues on Thursday.

He might not be there for long.

Manager Aaron Boone said Lagrange’s eye-popping spring training made the Yankees consider putting him on the Opening Day roster even though the righthander has never pitched above Double-A.

“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.”

It wasn’t just Lagrange’s 0.66 spring training ERA and 13 strikeouts in 13 2⁄3 innings. Even Opening Day starter Max Fried was impressed by the kid’s fastball, which was regularly clocked at more than 100 mph and reached 103.

“I’ve never seen velocity like that consistently and doing it over a bunch of innings,” said Fried, who is entering his 10th big-league season.

What Lagrange has done this spring training has put pressure on Nos. 4 and 5 starters Luis Gil and Ryan Weathers.

All of a sudden, those two need to get it going. As Satchel Paige said, “Don’t look back — something might be gaining on you.”

In this case, it’s “someone.”

Weathers, the hard-throwing lefthander the Yankees picked up from Miami in the offseason, has an 11.68 ERA after allowing seven runs in three innings to the Blue Jays in an 11-0 loss in Dunedin.

Boone didn’t see that game; he managed the Yankees in their 5-4 win over the Orioles at Steinbrenner Field.

“I heard they got some runs,” he 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.”

We should all have someone in our lives who is as tolerant of bad results as Boone is with his players, at least publicly.

“I don’t put a lot of stock in numbers in spring,” he said. “I definitely don’t do that. 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? Are they getting better at some of the deficiencies they have? So you’re trying to look at it all and evaluate it all.”

Even with that, Gil’s start on Friday night against Baltimore seems as if it will be more important than a spring training tuneup should be. He gave up seven runs in three innings to the Tigers in his last outing, and with the Yankees not needing a fifth starter until mid-April, there is no guarantee he will be on the roster when they open in San Francisco on Wednesday.

“There’s so many areas that he’s moving in a really good direction,” Boone said. “Now it’s just about continuing to build on the velocity and the shape of the pitches and then get his delivery where it needs to be that will allow him to have deception. So the reality is he’s not far off, but we want to see him continue to improve.”

What do the Yankees want to see from Lagrange? Just throw enough strikes to either be a weapon as a starter or maybe pitch out of the bullpen later in the season.

That the Yankees were tempted for even a nanosecond to start the season with Lagrange on the Opening Day roster shows how far he’s come and, potentially, how far other pitchers are in danger of falling.

“I would say he’s made it a difficult decision, which coming into this I wouldn’t even [have] thought there was a decision,” Boone said. “So he’s definitely got everyone’s attention.

“ I love where he’s at. I would not be surprised if he is impacting us early, middle, later part of the season. 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.”

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.