Yankees' Jasson Dominguez homers on first major-league swing . . .  against Justin Verlander!

HOUSTON — Speaking at the Yankees’ minor-league complex in late February 2022 after a morning workout, Jasson Dominguez pondered the question for a bit.

But only for a bit.

The question: What were his expectations for himself insofar as making it to the big leagues?

“In a perfect world,” Dominguez, then 19 but already as hyped a prospect in the Yankees’ system as there has been in some time, “[by] 20 or 21.”

It wound up being the former.

After only nine games with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Dominguez, who turned 20 on Feb. 7, was officially promoted to the Yankees on Friday and was in that night’s lineup against the Astros.

And what a debut it was. On his first big-league swing, he hit a two-run homer on the second pitch he saw from future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander, setting off a celebration by his family in the stands.

After DJ LeMahieu hit an opposite-field homer on Verlander’s second pitch of the game, Dominguez gave the Yankees a 3-0 lead with his opposite-field shot.

He wound up going 1-for-4 in the Yankees’ 6-2 victory.

The switch hitter, who batted .419 with a 1.095 OPS with Scranton, played centerfield and batted fifth (catching prospect Austin Wells, also promoted Friday, batted seventh).

“I didn’t think I was going to get here so fast,” Dominguez, speaking through his interpreter, said with a smile late Friday afternoon in the visitor’s clubhouse at Minute Maid Park. “It was fast. Very happy, though.”

It was not the rookie’s first time sharing a clubhouse with his veteran Yankees. The centerfielder, nicknamed “The Martian” almost from the time he signed with the Yankees for a franchise-record $5.1 million in July 2019, was in big-league camp in spring training this year. He made an impression on his manager and more than a few veterans.

“An incredible talent, but you [notice] he’s just not really fazed by where he’s at and I think that’s important here,” Giancarlo Stanton said. “There’s a lot of extra stuff [in the big leagues], but worry about the game, worry about what you can control. He should be very successful.”

Stanton, who hit a 433-foot two-run homer off Verlander in the third to give the Yankees a 5-1 lead, can truly appreciate what Dominguez is experiencing. Stanton, also 20 and, like Dominguez, a touted prospect, made his big-league debut in-season, doing so on June 8, 2010.

He, like Dominguez, spent that spring training with the big-league club. “My biggest help was big-league camp,” Stanton told Newsday of the advice he would give Dominguez, or any hyped prospect who has just been called up. “Just to see these guys [in the majors], they’re not mythical people that you only see on TV. The dimensions are still the same on this field that they are in the minors, for the most part.”

Stanton continued: “Know, to yourself, that you deserve to be here. You have to have the confidence that this is everything you’ve worked for, this is what you’ve earned and not try to create a new game or try to do too much now that you’re at this level. Stick to the discipline and work ethic that got you here and just learn from the successful guys that have done it over a long period of time and learn what works for you, too. There’s a trial-and-error process for a lot of people.”

Stanton smiled. “Maybe [accepting] advice, but everything doesn’t always apply to you, so have a good filtering process also,” he added.

Dominguez, who hit .455 with four homers and a 1.565 OPS in 11 spring training games, said being in camp was a benefit, though with a caveat. “I think the experience in spring training is definitely going to help me out,” he said. “But at the same time I understand it’s a different kind of game here in the big leagues. It’s about adjusting to it.”

Dominguez’s performance in spring training only increased the hype around him, so much so that there was uninformed speculation about him making the club out of camp (there was never even a small chance of that happening).

But Dominguez has long — long being a relative term for a 20-year-old — been used to the hype. He’s seen his name mentioned in the same sentence (though not by any serious talent evaluators with the Yankees or any outside the organization) as Mickey Mantle and Mike Trout.

“To be honest, I haven’t really been paying too much attention to all the comments and the information about me,” Dominguez said. “I’m not much on social media, I’m not reading a lot of the different articles that are written. I just try to focus on what I can do and try to play my game and better myself so that I can fulfill whatever expectation there is.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

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.