Why Was Jasson Dominguez Batting Third?
By EJ Fagan
September 2026
***
The following post comes from EJ Fagan's Substack, Baseball Is Life. It is shared with permission.
***
Following Thursday night’s game, Jasson Dominguez was optioned to Triple-A. He was brought back up on September 5th, started two games and hit .111 while playing bad defense in mostly right field. Unlike Anthony Volpe, his Triple-A numbers in 2026 were pretty pedestrian at .283/.361/.420 and his MLB WAR was negative. He’s a non-tender candidate this offseason.
On a surface level, I understand why he was called up. Aaron Judge was not yet back on the roster. They had two extra roster spots. Dominguez isn’t a good player but they didn’t have a lot of other outfield options on the 40-man. Sometimes you have to take the best of a bunch of bad options.
But batting him third makes no sense at all. It’s the kind of loser move that the Yankees make more often than they should.
Dominguez was filling in for a resting Aaron Judge. Fine. Maybe the right move is to play Heliot Ramos rather than Dominguez, but whatever. Neither are great options at the moment.
But batting him third? In between the hot trio of Cody Bellinger, Luis Garcia and Spencer Jones? It makes no sense at all. Third is a spot reserved for one of the team’s best hitters, not one of its worst. I know that the Yankees agree because Aaron Judge was batting third on Wednesday.
Two things cannot be true at the same time:
Jasson Dominguez is good enough to deserve to bat 3rd on September 10th.
Jasson Dominguez is bad enough to be optioned on September 11th.
So why was Dominguez batting third? Some combination of Aaron Boone not wanting to shuffle everyone else in the lineup and some desire to breakup righties. But just a few weeks ago, Heliot Ramos was regularly batting in the same spot.
The whole situation reminds me of one that caused me to write a post three years ago called, “The Yankees Are Bad at Making Decisions.” In that game, following an injury to Josh Donaldson, the Yankees called up Oswald Peraza from Triple-A and immediately batted him leadoff. If Peraza was good enough to bat leadoff, he should not have been in Triple-A. The team did something similar in the 2022 playoffs, when started each of Peraza, Isaiah Kiner-Falefa and Oswaldo Cabrera at shortstop in just four ALCS games.
It’s a loser move. If your goal is to win the ballgame, you put the best lineup on the field. That’s what the Brewers, Rays, Dodgers and other cutthroat teams do. The Yankees have often been accused of being too analytic in their decision-making, but I believe the opposite is true. They’re not analytical enough. They’re just lazy.
Maybe its because Aaron Boone is not good at managing a baseball team?
my thought was that Dominguez was batting in the spot suitable for Judge
in case the game situation suggested that Judge hit in Jasson's stead and replace him in the line-up and in the field.