As if we needed one last kick to the solar plexus in this horrific fun house of a baseball season … there was Aaron Boone, sitting behind a podium at Yankee Stadium late Sunday afternoon. His team had just managed to somehow win a game in which it had failed to register a hit across 10 innings, coming back from two down in the 12th and winning on a walk-off in the 13th.
The day was destined to be neither little noted nor long remembered, even with the feel-good ending. Until Boone sat behind the podium across the hallway from the Yankees clubhouse, a few minutes past 5:30 on the day when football season arrived to — we thought — put this woebegone baseball season out of its misery,
Jasson Dominguez had been a surprise scratch from the game. Whatever reasons remain for the most devoted of Yankees fan to keep tuning in to games the rest of this season, most of them centered around Dominguez, the Martian, the 20-year-old wunderkind who’d become a must-see attraction every time he stepped on the field.
Boone was asked about the absence.
And it seemed like he needed an extra half-beat to steady himself before delivering the brutal five-word verdict. And once he did, you understood.
“He’s got a torn UCL.”
OK. Here is where we need to remind you that Dominguez is a position player, not a pitcher. For a pitcher, a torn UCL (and the near-certain Tommy John surgery that follows) is a truly devastating diagnosis. It is not the career-ender it was 40 years ago, but it is certainly a career-shortener, often stealing as many as two years from a pitcher’s prime.
Even if Dominguez requires Tommy John, position players usually return in nine to 10 months. That means June or July. Some guys are quick healers; it took Bryce Harper five months to make it back, first as a DH, then as a first baseman. Shohei Ohtani — possibly facing his own Tommy John redux — was back in six, as a DH when he had the procedure done the first time.
So that part is very much an unknown.
And when Dominguez does come back, there is little reason to believe his skills will have deteriorated much. It’s a good time to remember he’s still only 20.
Boone admitted he was “crushed” for Dominguez.
He also, quite smartly, added: “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 the chance to be a long, excellent career.”
All true.
And, still, a devastating day. Dominguez, by himself, had made the prospect of the Yankees playing out the string to a season for the first time since 1992 seem bearable. He hit four home runs in his first seven games. His lefty swings at Yankee Stadium inspired a genuine sense of joy among Yankees fans, thinking about him taking aim at the short porch in right field for possibly the next 15-18 years. His fielding was terrific.
He was that rare hyped prospect: So far, equal to both sound and fury.
And beyond that, the fact that he so rapidly and readily acclimated himself to Triple-A and then to the big leagues the last few months has allowed the Yankees to genuinely believe they could count on him to be a prominent piece of their 2024 puzzle. He still will be. It’ll just take a while to see him again. Long term, no disaster.
Short term …
Well, as the great baseball philosopher Charlie Brown always put it: “Rats.”
“Definitely very shocking, you’re never expecting this to be the result,” Dominguez said. “The plan is to go through the surgery as soon as possible.”
He’s 20. He’s otherwise healthy. And the road ahead remains an endless path of possibility. The news really could have been worse.
But it still feels like just one more for-the-road billy club to the kneecaps in this endless sloth of a baseball season. The Yankees and Mets can’t put their stuff into mothballs fast enough for anybody.
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