Fourteen months and five days removed from Tommy John surgery, Clarke Schmidt made his return to a big league mound Wednesday.
Dealing with some nerves and much more adrenaline than he experienced on his rehab assignment, Schmidt struck out a pair and allowed two bloop hits in the seventh inning of what became a 5-4 loss to the Twins in 13 innings at Target Field.
“Emotional,” said Schmidt, whose two runners were stranded by Brent Headrick to keep it a 2-0 deficit at the time. “Obviously a long journey and not an easy journey at all. There’s a lot of ups and downs throughout the process, but really good to be able to get back out there.”
With his dad in attendance, Schmidt threw 24 pitches, 13 for strikes, while topping out at 95.8 mph on his fastball.
Now that he has the first game under his belt, the Yankees are hoping Schmidt can settle into a bullpen role to give them another option to pitch important innings down the stretch and into the playoffs.
The right-hander will likely be limited to one or one-plus innings at a time, and he will not pitch on back-to-back days.
But they believe he can help, with Wednesday offering some encouragement in that regard.
“I thought he looked good, he looked pretty settled, actually,” Boone said. “Hopefully as he goes now he’ll get a little sharper.”
Carlos Lagrange was activated off the injured list at Triple-A on Wednesday, two and a half months after being shut down with a capsular sprain of the right shoulder, and struck out two in a scoreless inning while topping out at 102.1 mph with his fastball.
The injury came as the top pitching prospect was making the transition from starter to reliever in hopes of impacting the Yankees bullpen in the second half of the season.
Though he now appears to be a long shot to actually reach the big leagues this year, it was encouraging that he was at least able to make it back to pitch in games at Triple-A.
“Obviously getting shut down for a while, the shoulder always makes you nervous,” Boone said. “But he’s responded well to the downtime and now the buildup. So the fact that he’s activated, I’m glad that he’s able to get back this year and hopefully pitch a little bit and see what we have.”
Trent Grisham (right hamstring strain) has “gotten up to a pretty decent speed” in his running progression, Boone said, while mixing in baseball activities.
But he remains without a timeline for a return.
