The Yankees lost another game and another series and didn’t call up Jasson Dominguez with rosters expanding. A banner day in the Bronx.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. On July 10, Brian Cashman showed up for the Yankees series in Tampa because he saw his team spiraling out of control for a third straight season.
“Thankfully, we got out of the gates really strong,” Cashman said that day. “Hopefully that cushion will allow us to work through this. Hopefully sooner than later because it’s gone on long enough.”
At the time, I wrote: Whenever you’re using the word “hopefully” to discuss your baseball season, you’re screwed, and Cashman used the word twice in 11 words. You would think more than $300 million in salaries could buy you more than hope, but that’s all it has gotten Cashman. It’s all he has gotten after incorrectly spending more than $3 billion in salaries since the Yankees’ last World Series appearance.
2. Well, the Yankees are still clinging on to hope to lead them to a division title. Following Sunday’s embarrassing 14-7 loss to the Cardinals to drop yet another series, Aaron Boone followed his boss’ lead from mid-July.
“We have to play our best, and we have to put our best foot forward to win these games,” Boone said on Sunday. “And we hope we start that tomorrow night.”
With 25 games left in the season, the Yankees are still hoping, still praying, still waiting to turn around their season that that began to fall apart in mid-June and still hasn’t recovered. The Yankees are 30-37 since June 13.
3. “As bad as people think we are playing … we are still in first place,” Nestor Cortes said after his latest stinker on Sunday. “It’s there for us to take.”
If Boone sounds like his boss in Cashman, then Cortes (along with many other Yankees) sounds like his boss in Boone. “It’s there for us to take” is no different than “It’s right in front of us.” And the only reason it (being the division title) is still there is because the Orioles’ rotation and lineup is decimated by injuries.
4. It’s both good and bad for the Yankees that the Orioles have been equally as bad for as long as the Yankees have. It’s good because the Yankees still lead the division by a 1/2 game with 25 games to go. It’s bad because it has the Yankees thinking they are a true first-place team when they have played like a last-place team for half of the season.
5. “We know how important these games are,” Boone said after the Cardinals’ posted a season-high in hits and runs against his team, two weeks after the White Sox — the worst team in the history of baseball — scored a season-high in runs against his team. If the Yankees know “how important these games are” then why was Jasson Dominguez batting second for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders on the day MLB rosters expanded?
“When he comes up here, you’re going to want to play him every day,” Boone said about the team’s decision to not call up Dominguez. “It doesn’t mean that won’t change in a couple of days, a week, two weeks, whatever it is.”
Recently, Cashman said there was “no lane” for Dominguez to play every day for these Yankees. On Sunday, Boone implied Dominguez wouldn’t be an everyday player for these Yankees, which is why he wasn’t called up. And yet, Boone said that could change in as early as a couple of days.
What could possibly change in a couple of days? It’s uncertain the decision is tied to the at-bat limit which is tied to rookie status which is tied to winning the 2025 Rookie of the Year and netting the Yankees a draft pick at the end of the first round due to Dominguez’s service time accumulated on the injured list for Tommy John. If the thing that could change is Alex Verdugo continuing to be among the worst everyday players in the majors then that’s absurd. Verdugo has been given 137 games to prove he’s anything other than the best in the world at hitting ground balls to the right side and he hasn’t. Even if Verdugo went from worst hitter in the league to just a truly awful hitter, would anyone feel good about him facing elite pitching every day in the postseason? Here is Verdugo’s OPS this season against the other five American League teams currently holding a playoff spot.
Astros: .580
Guardians: .503
Orioles: .337
Royals: .513
Twins: .583
Despite hitting .235/.292/.378 in the first half, Boone said this about Verdugo in mid-July:
“I feel like he’s getting really close … A lot of confidence he’s going on a heater in this second half.”
The second-half heater: .232/.298/.317 with one home run in 162 plate appearances. Somehow, Verdugo has been worse in the second half than he was in the first half.
6. When Dominguez was called up for a single game two weeks ago, the Yankees believed him to be good enough to bat fifth against the favorite to win the AL Cy Young. On Sunday, facing a right-handed starter with a 5.23 ERA, Verdugo batted ninth, not good enough to bat ahead of Anthony Rizzo playing in his first game in nearly three months (and who sucked when he last played) or Anthony Volpe, who is 14 percent below league average in 1,203 career plate appearances. Verdugo has been either OK or abysmal depending on which defensive metric you want to cite, and on Sunday he misplayed a fly ball into a two-run double.
7. With Aaron Judge having either the best or second-best season of his career and the Yankees down to 25 guaranteed games left with Juan Soto on the team, you would think they would be doing everything in their power every day to field the best possible team. And yet, their top prospect, the one who proved capable of hitting major-league pitching a year ago, who batted fifth against the AL Cy Young frontrunner two weeks ago and who continues to destroy Triple-A pitching daily remains in the minor leagues, so the Yankees can roster and play the worst everyday hitter in the league, a player they owe nothing to financially at the end of this month.
8. The only reason the Yankees are continuing to treat Verdugo like an all-time great who helped the team to multiple championships is because they don’t want to ruin their relationship with him. And the only reason they wouldn’t want to ruin their relationship with a player who isn’t part of their future after 2024 is if that player may actually be part of their future after 2024.
If Soto leaves this winter, the Yankees don’t have a back-up plan, the same way they didn’t 14 years ago when Cliff Lee chose the Phillies over the Yankees in free agency, which led to 40 percent of the Yankees’ rotation being Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon. There’s a reason Verdugo and Gleyber Torres survived the trade deadline when it made sense for one or both of them to go, and that’s because the Yankees’ back-up “plan” if Soto leaves will be to re-sign both Verdugo and Torres. If Soto leaves, this is likely the Yankees’ planned 2025 Opening Day lineup:
Gleyber Torres, 2B
Jasson Dominguez, CF
Aaron Judge, RF
Austin Wells, C
Giancarlo Stanton, DH
Jazz Chisholm, 3B
Anthony Volpe, SS
Alex Verdugo, LF
DJ LeMahieu, 1B
9. If the Yankees were to lose Soto and then re-sign Torres and Verdugo, they would be saving money. Even if you want to be overly generous in your calculations and say the duo will each make $20 million a year moving forward (Torres is at $14.2 million this season and Verdugo is at $8.7 million), the Yankees would be saving money. This is Hal Steinbrenner’s preferred free-agency outcome. Either way, if Soto returns or doesn’t, Dominguez will be starting in center field or left field for the Yankees on Opening Day 2025. He may not be good enough to be a Yankee in September, but with no further experience, he will be good enough to be one in March. Similar to Volpe attending the postseason as a fan in October 2022 and then magically being good enough to be the Opening Day shortstop in March 2023 over Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza, who all started playoff games at shortstop in 2022.
10. While Dominguez was busy playing meaningless baseball in Scranton-Wilkes/Barre on Sunday, the Yankees were busy losing another meaningful series to a mediocre team. Since August 1, the Yankees have played 27 games, with three of them coming against a postseason team (Cleveland), and they are 14-13. The soft, cupcake schedule that was going to allow the Yankees to stack wins, create separation from the Orioles and allow them to coast to a division title in September is over and the Yankees irresponsibly and inexplicably wasted it.
“Another opportunity to win a series that we aren’t able to finish,” Boone said on Sunday. “That sucks, but it’s onward.”
Onward to another series against a reeling team counting down the games, days, hours and minutes until their miserable season is over. Onward to another series the Yankees can’t be trusted to win. Indeed, that sucks.
Last modified: Sep 2, 2024
