The Yankees got some of the worst news possible when MRI scans revealed that Cody Bellinger had suffered a Grade 2 left hamstring strain in Saturday’s win over the Phillies and will likely miss 4-to-6 weeks. As it happens, it is from that very same game, an inning prior to the injury, that we find our nominee for At-bat of the Week, Jasson Domínguez crushing a solo home run off José Alvarado.
We join Domínguez leading off the seventh on Saturday night in Philadelphia. The Yankees are clinging to a 2-1 lead courtesy of an Austin Wells solo bomb and Bellinger RBI single. However, the Phillies have their flame throwing lefty Alvarado in the game and the dangerous top of their order due up in the bottom half of the frame, so the Yankees would love to tack on another insurance run.
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There is no mystery to how Alvarado is going to attack you, the lefty throwing the fastball 97.3 percent of the time. The one wrinkle he introduces is the type of fastball he’s going to throw, using the sinker about two-thirds of the time and the cutter about one-third of the time. He goes with his primary offering to start things off here.
Domínguez takes this 96 mph sinker for a called strike one. You might wonder how he could take a pitch right down the middle. The camera angle doesn’t quite do this pitch justice, but this sinker starts about a half-foot in off the plate before its 16 inches of arm-side run carries it back into the zone. It’s therefore easy to see how a hitter might give up early on a pitch initially aimed toward him.
Alvarardo looks to play off the placement of that last sinker by throwing a cutter down a similar tunnel, hoping to fool Jasson into chasing a pitch that now breaks away from the zone toward him for a whiff or better yet, a soft grounder.
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This is just unfair placement of this cutter right on the corner up and in. After seeing the way the previous sinker moved, you can understand why this would be a pretty automatic take from Domínguez assuming this pitch will remain high for ball one. However, Alvarado’s cutter has about a foot more downward break than the sinker, which allows it to drop into the zone at the last instant. Had Domínguez swung, it’s a likely broken bat, and had he used an ABS challenge, he would have lost.
Without a chance to swing the bat, Domínguez finds himself in an 0-2 hole. He knows a fastball is coming, he just has to guess which way the pitch is going to break given how hard it is to distinguish the sinker from the cutter based on reading the seams.
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Interestingly, Alvarado breaks out the four-seamer trying to get Domínguez to chase something above the zone. He only throws the pitch two-percent of the time and it’s easy to see why given how poorly executed this one was.
Despite the clear lack of command of the previous pitch, Alvarado doubles up on the four-seamer.
Same pitch, same result. It’s obvious Alvarado has no feel for this pitch given how non-competitively high out of the zone both of them landed.
After two complete misfires, Domínguez can safely eliminate the four-seamer with the count now 2-2. He has to decide whether the next pitch is going to break away from him or toward him, and the smart money is on the pitch that Alvarado throws twice as much as the other. As such, I had a hunch that Domínguez was sitting on the sinker here having filed away useful information on the first one he took for a called strike. He needs to hunt something that starts up and a bit inside and trust that the pitch’s movement will fade it right into the hitting zone.
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Domínguez gets the sinker right in his nitro zone and he swings with extreme prejudice, blasting the ball deep to left for a leadoff home run to double the Yankees’ lead.
Here’s the full AB:
Courtesy of Baseball Savant
Bellinger’s injury applies an even sharper magnifying glass to the Yankees’ Trade Deadline needs. Their desire for an upgrade at catcher has long been known, but now they find themselves in the market for an outfielder who at the very least can crush lefties given the very really possibility that neither Bellinger nor Aaron Judge are able to return for the end of the regular season.
On the whole, Domínguez has been a disappointment at the plate, with a minuscule four-percent walk rate, 82 wRC+, and replacement level value overall. However, barring a major addition to the outfield, Jasson projects to receive a hefty dose of playing time in the next month-plus. To that end, it is fair to highlight the strides he has made batting from the right side after all the hand-wringing about that aspect of his game in his first three big league seasons. Domínguez entered this year with a career 53 wRC+ batting righty — that’s up to a 91 wRC+ this season. The Yankees should obviously shoot for better from a starting outfielder, but with the injuries in the outfield mounting, it is some solace that he is no longer a liability batting from that side.
