The Yankees dropped both games in a split-squad series on Saturday afternoon. Losing to the Pittsburgh Pirates 3–0 and Philadelphia Phillies 6–3, the Bombers walked away with more negatives than positives. However, the main takeaways against Philadelphia range from a few notable pitching performances and several offensive contributors.
The Yankees had a few standout hitters:
Starting with the Yankees’ offense, they recorded just four hits and struck out 12 times across 31 at-bats. DJ LeMahieu worked a walk and tallied a hit across two at-bats, striking out once. The two big performers come in the form of Giancarlo Stanton and Jasson Dominguez.
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Stanton posted two hits, having struggled this spring to get going. He had just one hit entering this game, so it was nice to see Stanton finding his groove and seeing the ball a bit more efficiently.
Once again, Dominguez managed to steal the show, launching a home run to right field in the bottom of the 5th inning, driving in Ben Rice, one of the Yankees’ backup catchers.
Dominguez is now hitting .421 with a .500 OBP, and a 1.053 slugging percentage. There’s a strong argument to make that Dominguez should be in the conversation to be called to Triple-A, despite having played just a few games with Double-A Somerset last year. In fact, manager Aaron Boone spoke highly of Dominguez and suggested that he could be promoted sooner rather than later.
Dominguez now has four homers this spring and has looked comfortable in the outfield, so he’s edging ever closer to a Major League appearance toward the end of the 2023 season.
As for the team pitching, Domingo German enjoyed 2.1 innings of action, giving up three hits and two earned runs. He manages three strikeouts, hosting a 3.52 ERA this spring. German has had his fair share of ups and downs but has performed well enough with just a few weeks until opening day. Given Carlos Rodon and Frankie Montas will start the season on the injured list, German will have to play a big role for at least the first few weeks of the regular season.
The bullpen performed well, aside from an unfortunate outing by Matt Krook. Management has been excited about Krook and his stuff, but he gave up six hits, and three earned runs across 3.0 innings to close the game. He did manage to strike out four batters in the process.
However, it was nice to see Michael King get another opportunity, striking out one batter and putting together a pretty clean inning of work. King seems to be inprimePrime shape to start the regular season, having recovered from Tommy John surgery this past year.
The Yankees will look ahead to Sunday afternoon as they prepare to take on the Boston Red Sox at 1:05 PM.