Alexander Wilson
Spring training ends the same way it began for the New York Yankees: with Will Warren making it look easy and Jasson Dominguez making it look hard.
New York closed out the Grapefruit League schedule with a 6-2 win over the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday at Steinbrenner Field, and while the final record will go in the file and get forgotten by Thursday, Warren’s outing will not. Five innings, one hit, zero runs, six strikeouts, zero walks. His spring ERA finished at 1.42. Opening Day is Wednesday.
Warren Ends Spring as the Rotation’s Most Dependable Answer
The Yankees have spent most of March asking questions about their rotation that nobody wanted to answer. Gerrit Cole is still working his way back. Carlos Rodon is not even throwing lives yet. Luis Gil looked excellent on Friday but probably wont make the rotation out of the gate. Ryan Weathers had one brilliant start and two disastrous ones. Into all of that uncertainty, Warren has been the quietest, steadiest presence in camp.
Five outings this spring. A 1.42 ERA. Sixteen strikeouts before today, six more against Philadelphia. Not a single walk. Aaron Boone called him the “non-talked-about guy” in the rotation a few days ago, and the description was accurate in the most complimentary sense: Warren has been so consistently good that there was nothing alarming to say about him.
The stuff has ticked up. His four-seamer is running about a mile per hour harder than last season, with added vertical movement and a 37 percent whiff rate on the pitch in early spring samples. He made 33 starts in 2025 and posted a 4.44 ERA, a solid if unspectacular number for a pitcher learning on the job. Against a Phillies lineup with Harper, Schwarber, and Bohm, Warren cruised. That is not nothing.
The Offense Did Its Part
Aaron Judge homered to left in the fifth, his first spring long ball since returning from the World Baseball Classic, putting New York up 3-0 and ending any real competitive tension. The Yankees had already pushed across two in the fourth on RBI singles from Ryan McMahon and JC Escarra, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled in another run in the fifth to stretch the lead to four.
Amed Rosario added an RBI single in the eighth to score K. West, and a Schuemann sacrifice bunt scored Oswaldo Cabrera to push it to 6-2. It was a full lineup effort against Aaron Nola, who allowed three earned runs in four innings and has bigger concerns than a spring loss with opening night approaching.
Schwarber homered in the eighth off Tim Hill for Philadelphia’s two runs, a reminder that the guy hits the ball hard regardless of the month.
The Dominguez Problem Has No Good Answer
And then there is Jasson Dominguez, who dropped a fly ball in left field Sunday for what felt like the hundredth defensive miscue. I have watched him make this team’s roster conversation genuinely difficult with his bat, which is real and good enough to play every day. His glove remains a different conversation entirely. The dropped ball was another entry in a long reel that the Yankees front office has seen every day for six weeks, and they still have not figured out what to do with it.
Opening Day is this Wednesday. The Dominguez question will have a final answer by then. I am not sure the answer is going to satisfy anyone.
The Yankees head to San Francisco for the season opener this week, let’s get it!
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