Yankees looking forward to watching a healthy Jasson Dominguez earn job in leftfield
TAMPA, Fla. — The Yankees plan on having hyped prospect Jasson Dominguez as their starting leftfielder come Opening Day.
But that comes with a caveat.
The 22-year-old Dominguez has to prove this spring he’s worthy of the assignment.
“He’s a young guy who still has to go out and earn it,” Aaron Boone said Tuesday in his spring training kickoff news conference.
That, not surprisingly, echoed comments made by general manager Brian Cashman in December.
“I’d like to see Dominguez get his shot,” Cashman said. “[But] he’s young. He’s got to earn it, and he’s got to retain it.”
Last year was more or less a wash for Dominguez, who spent most of the season recovering from the Tommy John surgery he underwent in September 2023. (The outfielder was cleared to play last June but shortly after getting underway in the minors he suffered an oblique injury that kept him out until late July.)
Dominguez made it back to the big leagues by early September but, because of his defensive issues in leftfield, the Yankees didn’t trust him there in the postseason, playing Alex Verdugo instead.
“He hasn’t played a ton of baseball for as fast as he’s gotten to the big leagues,” Boone said.
Dominguez has been accompanied by great fanfare and expectations pretty much from the time the Yankees signed him in 2019 at the age of 16 out of the Dominican Republic, awarding him a franchise-record $5.1 million signing bonus at the time.
The switch-hitting Dominguez did nothing during his rapid development to dampen the hype surrounding him — he was tagged with the out-of-this-world nickname “The Martian” — hitting .455 with four homers and a 1.565 OPS in 11 Grapefruit League games in his first big-league spring training in 2023. He then set the Yankees’ universe on fire upon his Sept. 1 call-up later that same season, homering off future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander on the second pitch he saw that night.
And doing so inside Houston’s Minute Maid Park, the scene of so much Yankees postseason carnage over the last decade.
It was the start of a dynamic first week in the majors, but it all came to a sudden end after eight games when Dominguez, with four homers and a .980 OPS in that stretch, was diagnosed with a tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.
This spring, with Dominguez fully healthy, brings the opportunity for the outfielder to show he belongs.
“I’d love for him to secure it and grab it,” Boone said of the leftfield job. “My expectation is that he will. I’m looking forward to seeing his continued growth . . . he’s going to get every opportunity to be that guy, and we are certainly hoping he shows us that.”
Much of which must come on the defensive side of the ball.
“I think it’s just experience,” Boone said. “He’s been working his tail off over there [the club’s minor-league complex] the last 10 days, two weeks, every day getting his work in. Some of the bumps he had there last year was really just a result of probably not having a lot of reps and not having a lot of experience. He certainly has the ability and the talent to do it at a really high level out there.”
Notes & quotes: Boone said righty Jake Cousins, mostly terrific last season out of the bullpen, recently suffered a forearm strain and was in the early stages of a 3-to-4 week period of “no-throw,” putting the reliever in jeopardy of being ready for the season opener March 27 against the Brewers at the Stadium . . . Boone said righthander Clayton Beeter, who likely will start the season in the minors as starting pitching depth, is dealing with a “little shoulder issue” that is not believed to be serious and that has the 26-year-old just “a little behind” the rest of the pitchers in camp . . . Managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner recently said on the YES Network he was open to discussing an extension with Boone, who is in the final year of his contract, but the eighth-year manager said Tuesday “nothing’s happened yet.” An in-season extension remains, though not impossible, a long shot as Steinbrenner, per his personal policy, almost always lets contracts expire, whether it be for players, management or staff.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
More Yankees headlines
