Carlos Legrange is moving through the Yankees system at a consistent rate. Moving through the three lower levels in 2024 and the first part of 2025. Then he spent the majority of 2025 at Double-A Somerset, and he’s spent all of 2026 in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Sure, everyone loves the story of the guy tearing up the ranks advancing three levels in one season, but the good thing about a near one-level-per-year pace is time. Time to take a long look, over the course for the ups and downs of a normal season. The ability to compare metrics and track marked improvement across levels.

Legrange’s numbers haven’t exactly been stellar in the minors. He has a 4.16 career ERA, with a 4.55 ERA in Triple-A. He has a career opponents’ batting average of .192, so it’s not that he’s being hit around, but it’s the walks. His career WHIP is 1.26 show that, like I mentioned back in his initial Spotlight post, walks and control continue to be an issue. I will give credit where credit is due, whoever. His strikeout rate is down a couple of percentage points from where it was in 2025, BUT he did reduce his walks/9 from 5.4 in 2025 to 4.7 in 2026. Not life-changing, but it is progress.

Carlos Legrange has been used as both a starter a reliver in 2026, even picking up a save in the process. While Legrange has appeared out of the bullpen before in his professional career, it was never more than the occasional appearance until now. In 2026 however, LeGrange has appeared in 18 games, but only made 11 starts. This tells me that the Yankees are recognizing that he may not be as viable of a starter as they’d hoped if he can’t throw strikes, so they’re giving him a longer look out of the bullpen. That, or they see an opportunity to use his big arm as a late-inning weapon in October, with his heater hitting 103.

Legrange’s command issues remind me of Sean Newcomb and Jordan Hicks. Guys who were originally bred as starters but were later relegated to the pen when they couldn’t locate consistently enough. But then there are guys like Aroldis Chapman or Michael Kopech who found that their particular skillsets and high velocities served them well in short spurts later in games. Somewhere in the middle there is Legrange.

Like I said, with Legrange sitting in Triple-A, there’s a chance the Yankees give him a look once rosters expand or even in October. He’d be completely foreign to big league hitters, and his 6’7″ frame would make him tough to pick up blindly. I wouldn’t, though. I’d let him focus on shoring up his command in Scranton.

The bottom line is, Carlos Legrange has a clear area of improvement. We’ve seen it trending in a positive direction, but he still needs work. There’s no need to rush him. The Yankees are always a team that’s active at the deadline. They can find the arms they need for an October run there. Let Legrange bake in the oven a little longer. Then again, there’s always a chance Legrange gets dealt as part of that activity. At this moment, we don’t know, but by the time this post is published – three days after the deadline – we’ll have our answer.