Nobody told George Lombard Jr. it was supposed to be a routine spring training game.
The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4-0 on Wednesday at JetBlue Park, and the final score is almost beside the point. What matters is what happened on the fourth pitch of the game, when Lombard, the Yankees’ 20-year-old top prospect, turned on a 96.8 mph Garrett Crochet fastball and sent it 392 feet over the replica Green Monster.
Exit velocity: 104.2 mph. Opponent: the two-time All-Star who finished second in AL Cy Young voting last season. Take a moment to appreciate what that means for the future of this franchise.
George Lombard Jr. Announces Himself
Crochet is not a spring curiosity. He is the Red Sox’s ace, a legitimate frontline starter who posted historically good strikeout numbers in 2025 and is regarded as one of the best left-handers in the American League. For Lombard to ambush him in his first at-bat, drive the ball at 104.2 mph into the seats, and then follow it up with a 108.5 mph single later in the game, is the kind of spring training moment that travels. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has already called Lombard’s defense “MLB-ready.” After Wednesday, a few people will be asking how far behind his offense really is.
This is not a player you can keep buried in Double-A Somerset forever. The 2023 first-round pick slashed .235/.367/.381 in the Eastern League last season as a 19-year-old, which is a profile scouts consistently defend given his age and aggressive assignment. The Yankees want to be careful, and they should be. But Lombard went 2-for-4 with a home run, a single, and two RBIs. That is a small sample. It is also not nothing.
Ben Rice added a home run of his own in the fifth inning, a 412-foot shot to right center that made it 4-0 and put the outcome firmly to bed. Rice went 2-for-3 with two RBI on the afternoon and looks every bit the everyday first baseman the Yankees need him to be in 2026.
Luis Gil Shows Up When It Matters
Luis Gil needed this. After a spring outing against Minnesota that raised legitimate velocity and command concerns, Gil responded with three innings of two-hit, zero-run ball on Wednesday, striking out six batters and walking two. The strikeout number is the key figure. Gil’s whiff rate cratered in 2025 after his return from injury, and the whole conversation about his rotation security in New York hinges on whether those missing strikeouts come back. Six punchouts in three frames suggests they might still be in there. One outing does not settle a spring-long debate, but this was the answer Gil needed to give.
Bradley Hanner, Carson Coleman, and Kervin Castro handled the back end without incident. Castro picked up his first save of the spring, retiring five of six batters faced. The back end of this bullpen is still being sorted out, but performances like that keep the application alive.
What It Means
The Yankees are 9-2 in Grapefruit League play and would not care less about the record. What they care about is answers, and Wednesday provided two of them. Gil can still miss bats. Lombard is real, even when the stakes are raised. Those are not small things to learn in the first week of March.
The future arrived early. Someone should probably tell Boston.