Domínguez has lived up to the moonshot hype, but his September call-up has been cut short by an elbow injury that requires Tommy John surgery
NEW YORK — The Yankees keep using the same word to describe Jasson Domínguez, but the context has changed drastically. Where Domínguez once crushed baseballs and injected new life into a flailing clubhouse as a September call-up, the team was left crestfallen after the 20-year-old center fielder suffered a torn UCL that will require season-ending surgery and likely force him to miss the first half of 2024.
“I’m crushed for him,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said Sunday afternoon following a 4-3 victory over the Brewers in the Bronx. “At the same time, he’s a young man, and these things resolve themselves. It’s a moment in time, in the grand scheme of things, in what we feel like has a chance to be a long, excellent career.”
In the grand scheme, Domínguez has been followed by Hall of Fame hype since he drew comparisons to Mike Trout and Mickey Mantle as a 16-year-old prodigy in the Dominican Republic. The Mantle similarities are tantalizing. Domínguez is a switch hitter with raw power from both sides of the plate and notable speed despite his bulked-up body. His official listing on MLB.com says he is 5-foot-9, 190 pounds, while an ESPN story from 2019 put him at 5-foot-11, 195 — Mantle’s height and weight during his career.
In July 2019, the Yankees signed Domínguez as an international free agent for $5.1 million, a franchise record that accounted for more than 90% of the team’s allotted bonus pool that year. Since arriving in the big leagues on Sept. 1, the player nicknamed “The Martian” for his otherworldly tools had been having moment after moment that lived up to the moonshot hype.
Facing future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander in his first plate appearance, Domínguez crushed the second pitch he saw — his first swing — into the left-field seats for an opposite-field home run.
Two games later, on Sunday Night Baseball, he clobbered a go-ahead two-run blast to help the Yankees complete their first three-game sweep of the Astros in a decade.
He smoked a double in his home debut, and a night later he went 3-for-4 with a home run, his first at Yankee Stadium.
Last Friday, he smacked yet another dinger, becoming the first player since at least 1900 to hit home runs in four of his first seven games.
And let’s not forget the moment The Martian created when he first interacted with the Bleacher Creatures in the Bronx on Sept. 5.
Standing in center field, Domínguez heard the Bleacher Creatures start calling his name after the first pitch had been thrown in his first game at Yankee Stadium. He waited for a pause in the action and looked toward the right-field bleachers. He took off his glove, tapped his two index fingers together, and lifted his right pointer toward the sky to say hello to his new friends — a nod to Steven Spielberg’s 1982 classic E.T. the Extra Terrestrial and finding himself at home in the Bronx.
In his first eight MLB games, The Martian posted a .258/.303/.677 slash line with a double and four homers. He also made the Yankees feel like winners again in a season of last-place baseball that yielded a nine-game losing streak in August, the franchise’s longest skid since E.T. became a box-office hit. During that losing streak, Boone likened his club to “sick animals in a lot of ways.” General manager Brian Cashman described it by using the words “disappointed … angered … frustrated … embarrassed … disaster … a shock.”
The Yankees won their first five games with Domínguez in the lineup, his name written in the three-hole behind Aaron Judge in all but one of his starts. For a moment, there was a glimmer of hope the Yankees could rally and make an improbable playoff run. But that dream died quickly. They lost their next three games, falling to nine games out of the final wild-card spot.
When the Yankees snapped that skid on Sunday without Domínguez in the lineup, they did so in one of the most uninspiring ways imaginable. They were no-hit through the first 10 innings before, somehow, thanks to a combination of great pitching and the zombie-runner rule, winning it in the 13th.
Then came the crushing news of Domínguez’s diagnosis of needing Tommy John surgery, which typically requires nine to 10 months recovery time for position players. His elbow had started bothering him during batting practice before his third MLB game, but he was able to play through it at first. He told the Yankees about it last Wednesday, because the soreness wasn’t going away. It continued to get “progressively worse” since then, he said, prompting an MRI.
“It’s definitely very shocking news,” Domínguez said through an interpreter.
“You’re never expecting for this to be the result. Now understanding what happened, we have to look forward and go through it.”
Even as Domínguez met the expectations of being the next Mantle, the Yankees kept trying to temper expectations. When asked what he thought would be an ideal first taste of the big leagues for Domínguez, Boone said, “Get regular at bats and start to really see what it's like to prepare and game plan up here. See how pitchers start to make adjustments to him within games.”
Had things gone according to plan for the Yankees, Domínguez likely wouldn’t have reached the majors this season. But injuries to key players, most notably Judge, changed the trajectory of a team that had World Series aspirations and could ultimately finish with a sub-.500 record for the first time since 1992.
For Domínguez, those regular at bats will have to wait until next summer. For fans who got their own taste of what the future holds, it’ll be a long wait until they see The Martian at home again in center field.