Yankees are About to Learn a Hard Jasson Dominguez Lesson

The New York Yankees are apparently willing to move at least one of Jasson Dominguez or Spencer Jones before the MLB trade deadline, which should not come as much of a surprise.

The Yankees have some glaring needs on their roster, and Dominguez and Jones represent two of their most obvious choices to deal.

Why? Because neither has a definitive long-term place in the Bronx. Aaron Judge — who is currently sidelined — is the right fielder as long as he wants to be. Cody Bellinger was just re-signed on a five-year contract to play left.

Yes, I suppose that Jones could ultimately take over for Trent Grisham in center field next season, but there is zero chance New York is going to let Dominguez patrol that spot. I don't think the Yankees would move Bellinger back to center, either, which means Dominguez won't be able to man left field.

One of them has to go, and the logical choice if Dominguez, even though New York has clearly prioritized him over Jones.

The problem? Dominguez's value is not nearly where the Yankees think it is. Or at least that's how it appears.

It's entirely possible that New York is fully aware of how far Dominguez's stock has plummeted over the last couple of seasons. He was an unmitigated disaster in left field last year, and while he showed some promise offensively, he wasn't quite good enough to compensate for his terrible defense, which led to a second-half benching.

This season? Dominguez is slashing .230/.265/.392 with five home runs and 11 RBI over 156 plate appearances. For as much as people want to pretend that he has shown progress, his .656 OPS is considerably lower than last year's (.719), and he is still an adventure defensively.

Dominguez brings terrific speed and savvy baserunning to the table. That's for sure. He also possesses a rather strong arm. But the qualities everyone thought he had when he was being tabbed as the next Mickey Mantle a few years ago just don't seem to exist.

Surely, rival teams know this. They aren't stupid. They aren't simply going to salivate over the idea of adding Dominguez just because he's a big name. He owns a 3.8 percent walk rate this season. His barrel rate is at 5.2 percent. And for someone as fast as Dominguez, extra-base hits are hard to come by.

Couple all of that with the fact that Dominguez doesn't really have a clear-cut position, and it's going to be really difficult for the Yankees to extract anything of extreme value with Dominguez as the focal point of a trade package.

Like Jones, Dominguez can definitely be intriguing as a supplementary piece in a deal, but the days of the 23-year-old actually being the featured attraction in a trade offer — at least for a star player — are long gone.

Many New York fans remain attached to Dominguez because of the player they thought he was, but it's becoming increasingly obvious that that player just isn't there.

We'll see exactly how Brian Cashman views him over the next couple of weeks.

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