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Cubs 2, Yankees 1
AB R H BI
Verdugo LF 3 0 1 0
I may be the only person in a 25-mile radius not freaking out about this. For those of you too far away to hear the screaming...the Yankees didn’t call up Jasson Dominguez, their top prospect and MLB Pipeline’s #16 prospect, when rosters expanded on September 1. They’re sticking with Alex Verdugo, who has something like three hits and one walk since the middle of May. Verdugo’s good defense has made him worth about a win this year, but he’s the weak spot in a Yankee lineup with a lot of disappointing hitters, down to ninth in the batting order because there is no tenth.
Dominguez had 17 PA in the majors last year, hit four home runs, and became the darling of Yankee fans who had been hearing about him since the second Reagan administration. He then suffered a torn right UCL and underwent Tommy John surgery. Dominguez is 21 and has just 267 total plate appearances above Double-A. He’s been good at Triple-A this year in less than 200 PA, but hardly dominant: .309/.368/.480. His minor-league batted ball data isn’t terribly impressive — 7% barrel rate, .459 expected SLG, 88 mph EV. He’s a year removed from Tommy John surgery, which has diminished superstars for up to 18 months past the surgery date.
There’s been a lot of talk this year about how players coming up from the minors are struggling initially because of the wide gap in pitching quality that now exists between the minors and majors. We saw Jackson Holliday start 2-for-34 and Jackson Chourio take a couple of months to get going. Take a guy who is not dominating Triple-A and ask him to make that adjustment, and it’s hardly clear he’ll be better than the alternative, no matter how annoying the alternative here.
Throw it all together, and I see more risk in bringing up Dominguez than others do, with a real possibility that it’s a brutal experience that affects his development. I don’t love dropping him into a situation where fans are going to treat him like a savior when he’s a 21-year-old coming off major surgery with a half-season of playing time at the top two levels. I think the Yankees are making a coin flip short-term decision and the right medium-term one.
