With the Hudson Valley Renegades playing a double-header against the Aberdeen IronBirds, Carlos Lagrange would get the ball for the Yankees‘ High-A affiliate in the second game. The right-hander has been one of the best pitchers in the South Atlantic League this year, and he flashed that remarkable upside once again in Wappinger Falls. With nine strikeouts and no walks across six innings of two-run baseball, Lagrange’s insane swing-and-miss stuff and newfound command were on full display, and you could argue it should be one of his final starts in the Hudson Valley region.
Boasting the third-highest K-BB% in all of Minor League Baseball (min. 30 IP), Carlos Lagrange’s powerful fastball and excellent array of secondary pitches present serious ace upside.
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Do the Yankees Have a New No. 1 Pitching Prospect With Carlos Lagrange?
Across six starts with the Hudson Valley Renegades, Carlos Lagrange owns a 3.45 ERA and 2.61 FIP, striking out 40.7% of batters faced with a mere 5.7% walk rate. The right-hander has vastly improved his command after issuing 20 walks in just 21.1 innings last season between the Florida Complex League and Single-A.
Last season, he landed just 41% of his first pitches in a count for strikes, whereas this year that number is up to 51.2%, with his overall Strike% sitting at an encouraging 67%. The improved strike-throwing abilities maximize his pitch mix, which is the most impressive for any prospect I’ve evaluated in the Yankees’ organization.
I used Cameron Grove’s PitchingBot model to help me grade each of these pitches based purely on the characteristics of the pitch alone, ignoring his command or feel for these pitches.
Four-Seam Fastball: 60 Grade
Carlos Lagrange’s four-seam fastball only hit 100 MPH once last season, and that requires you to round up on a pitch that actually clocked in at 99.8 MPH. This season, he has topped out at 101 MPH while regularly reaching triple-digits, and that’s not the only improvement he’s made with this heater. His fastball is averaging between 16-17 inches of IVB on average, an improvement over the 14-16 inches we saw last season.
What makes this fastball even more impressive is his wide release point and low arm angle, which create a difficult look for hitters when located at the top of the zone. Lagrange can generate a flatter vertical approach angle than most would think a 6’7 giant could, and it creates an uncomfortable at-bat for opposing hitters.
It’s already bad enough that they have to catch up to 98+ MPH fastballs, but his combination of a flatter arm angle and above-average vertical movement makes that fastball almost impossible to square up at the top of the zone.
Sweeper: 65 Grade
A new pitch that Carlos Lagrange unveiled during the Arizona Fall League, this sweeping slider is averaging ~15 inches of lateral movement, sitting in the low 80s. This pitch is absolutely filthy, and right-handed hitters have an extremely difficult time laying off of it because of his aforementioned wide release point.
With a 2.4-foot horizontal release point, Lagrange has one of the widest releases in Minor League Baseball, and that creates an extremely sharp angle for his slider to generate whiffs on the outer-half of the plate. He can attack the first-base side of the plate and watch hitters fall over themselves offering at a pitch that looks like it’ll spin over the middle of the plate, but ends up being out of the zone with zero chance of doing any damage against it.
Lagrange’s sweeper is a pitch he will use aggressively; the fastball being good doesn’t stop him from using his secondaries when he smells blood in the water. When a strikeout is there for the taking, he knows a breaking ball off the plate can get these young, inexperienced hitters to make a bad swing decision, and it’s a sign that his pitchability is much better than people might think for an inexperienced power pitcher.
Cutter: 70 Grade
This cutter is a very interesting pitch because Carlos Lagrange can throw it with more of a gyro slider shape or a traditional cutter shape with more velocity and vertical movement. His ability to manipulate the shape of this pitch is extremely impressive, and it can be either an effective soft-contact inducer or a whiff pitch depending on what Lagrange needs it to be.
Gerrit Cole and Max Fried both have cutters with varying shapes based on the situation, so it’s not surprising that the Yankees have a prospect who they’ve helped accomplished a similar feat. This pitch is a truly effective weapon that creates more uncomfortable looks for hitters because Carlos Lagrange can use it in a versatile fashion, speeding them up and slowing them down at random without a consistent way to read which cutter you’ll get out of his hand.
A pitch that was his most effective before improving the fastball or adding a sweeper, it’s a great bridge pitch considering how much lateral movement his sweeper and four-seamer get in opposite directions.
Changeup: 50 Grade
Carlos Lagrange’s changeup is the least developed of his repertoire, but we’ve seen flashes of this pitch improving throughout the 2025 season. This is a pitch that I believe he can effectively use against left-handed hitters as he continues to get more experience in the Minor Leagues, as his arm slot and feel for moving the ball laterally are desirable traits for an off-speed pitch.
There’s a good amount of velocity separation, and while his changeup doesn’t have elite-level movement, it plays well off of the fastball because of their similar tailing action. When located properly, this can be an effective swing-and-miss weapon, and yesterday he displayed perhaps his best changeup of the season, picking up three of his nine total strikeouts with it.
The Yankees are a hub for developing changeups, and I believe Carlos Lagrange’s changeup could be a plus pitch for him down the road, which would be a game-changer for an already excellent prospect.
Final line on Carlos Lagrange: 6 ip, 5 h, 2 r, 2 er, 0 bb, 9 k, 1 hr. 96 pitches, 64 strikes.
I’ve got three strikeouts on the fastball, three on the changeup, and three on the breaking ball, including this one on his last pitch of the night.
That’s 50 k, 7 bb in 31.1 ip. pic.twitter.com/PwOP13bo9C
— Conor Foley (@ConorFoleyYES) May 16, 2025
I believe that Carlos Lagrange has ascended into being the top pitching prospect in the organization, and while I didn’t rank him as their best in my recent top-10 update, the strike-throwing abilities haven’t wavered. I anticipated that Lagrange would have a stretch where the walk rate climbed a bit or where hitters would tee off in the zone, as command issues either reflect in high damage rates, low strikeout rates despite excellent stuff, or high walk rates.
None of those things pop up when evaluating Carlos Lagrange’s numbers this season, and through six starts, he looks like one of the best pitchers in all of Minor League Baseball. His massive frame, elite repertoire, and aggressiveness going after hitters are traits that are hard to find, and this could be the Yankees’ next homegrown ace.
Despite how sharp Ben Hess, Bryce Cunningham, and Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz look so far in Hudson Valley, I have to give the edge to Carlos Lagrange as things stand right now. His stuff is off-the-charts; he can throw four different pitches while being able to manipulate the shape of one of them to effectively create a fifth pitch, and I am confident that the strike rates are for real.