Yankees At-Bat of the Week: Jasson Domínguez (4/4)

Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images El Marciano won an eight-pitch battle, setting Oswaldo Cabrera up to open the scoring against the Pirates last Friday. After five long months, our Yankees at-bat of the week series is back! I’m excited to continue to share this feature that our esteemed former colleague and FanGraphs writer Esteban Rivera started alongside sequence of the week, which will be making its return on Friday.

For the first entry of 2025, Jasson Domínguez gets the nod.The biggest question facing Domínguez over the offseason didn’t concern his bat but rather how his glove would hold up at a new position in left field. He has mostly acquitted himself well on the long grass, grading out at roughly league-average though his first ten games.



The bat has been a bit slow to really get going, Domínguez batting .222 with a 105 wRC+. It was always unlikely that he would immediately return to the pace of his explosive debut in 2023 when he hit four home runs in eight games, and the Yankees rightly continue to show unwavering faith in his process.

There’s good — 10.5-percent walk rate, 77th percentile bat speed — mixed in with the bad — tenth percentile or worse in average exit velocity and squared-up rate, and it paints the picture of a young hitter still getting his feet under him at the major league level. We join Domínguez with one out in the second of the series opener against the Pirates last Friday.

Trent Grisham is on first following a one-out walk, and it’s important that the Bombers cash in early run scoring opportunities after wasting two on and no out in the first. Mitch Keller goes right at Domínguez from first pitch, pouring in a 95 mph four-seamer over the heart of the plate. Jasson is late and shoots it foul to left, the ball practically making contact at the label.

After seeing that late swing from Domínguez, Keller goes right back to the fastball, the 94 mph heater targeted toward pretty much the same location — elevated and a bit under the hitter’s hands.Same pitch, same result. On top of being late again, Jasson is imprecise with his barrel, unable to open his front half or pull his hands in to get to the inside pitch, fouling it off the label once more.

With two late swings against the fastball in a row, the easy choice is to triple up on the pitch. If Keller is able to elevate the pitch more, there’s a good chance he’ll get the swinging strikeout.Instead, Keller leaves this one out over the plate more than the first two.

What’s more, Jasson is slowly syncing his timing to the velocity, making contact a little further down the bat toward the barrel, but still underneath the pitch for his third foul in a row. Perhaps Keller and the catcher pick up on Domínguez’s improving timing, because they switch to the slider for the fourth pitch of the encounter. This was a mature take on a pitch that would have struck out many batters.

Even though the slider ends up in the dirt back-foot, it comes out of a similar tunnel as the three fastballs to open the AB, and I almost couldn’t believe that Jasson barely flinched at the pitch.Seeing Domínguez’s lack of interest at offering at the chase slider, Keller changes tack and looks to attack away with off-speed, Joey Bart setting a target for a changeup off the plate outside. This pitch is a ball all the way out of Keller’s hand, resulting in an easy take for Domínguez.

It starts higher and farther outside than any of the fastballs Keller threw, and the movement takes it even further away from the hitter. To this point in the AB, Keller has exhibited his best execution with the fastball, so he returns to the heater hoping two straight slower pitches will have interrupted Domínguez’s timing.It’s pretty much the exact same result as the previous three fastballs Keller threw.

Jasson fights the pitch off foul — still a tad late — and lives to fight another pitch. A tried and true method to fool a hitter is to speed them up and then slow them down, and that’s exactly the one Keller employs on pitch seven, changing speeds down to the changeup.This is by far the best take of the AB from Jasson.

The changeup tunnels for much of its journey toward home with the four-seamer that immediately preceded it, only fading down and away once it gets close to the plate. However, Jasson isn’t remotely fooled, watching the pitch all the way into the glove to fight back from 0-2 to a full count. After seeing Domínguez spit on all three off-speed pitches he threw, Keller has no choice but to attack the zone with a heater to avoid putting a second runner on via a walk.

He gets the pitch to the same location as the first two fastballs that Domínguez was late on, but this time Jasson is ready. What a fabulous piece of hitting! Jasson makes an adjustment from the first three fouls vs. fastballs.

He starts his swing a little earlier and shortens up, allowing him to catch the pitch out in front and pull it with authority down the right field line for a double. Here’s the full AB: Courtesy of Baseball Savant This proved to be an early turning point in the game, the Yankees immediately capitalizing on Domínguez winning the eight-pitch battle as Oswaldo Cabrera plated both runners with a single to open the scoring. The offense would not look back from there, sailing to a 9-4 victory.

I feel this AB showcased several of the abilities that will allow Domínguez to have a successful big league career. The pitch recognition is impressive, Domínguez able to lay off three separate off-speed pitches immediately thrown following a fastball with the same initial trajectory. More impressive is the adjustment he made mid-AB.

He realized his bat path was traveling under the four-seamer, so he made sure to stay on top of the 3-2 heater and ripped it for a double. This mature approach is why I’m still high on El Marciano..