ALDS General Discussion

The Royals certainly did better in free agency than the Yankees.  Cashman's 18 million dollar man isn't even on the active playoff roster.  

With all the days off, they'll go with a 3-man rotation, and with 7 relievers, one long man (Schmidt) plus Mayza should be enough. Even if both Cole and Rodon are knocked out early, the pitchers used to finish Game 1 will have 2 days' rest before game 3. And if Gil gets knocked out early as well, there probably isn't a game 4, but if there is, the guys who finished game 2 will have 3 days' rest. I guess they feel having two pinch runners in Berti and Ellis is worth it. Wish they had a better bench bat to put in that 15th hitter slot.

The Mets had a similar problem in their 1986 title season.

They had weak hitting Rafael Santana (.218 BAVG, .539 OPS) at short and had two big power hitters who weren't good defensively in Kevin Mitchell and Howard Johnson. Santana started 111 games at short for them that season, and Mitchell and Johnson got  42 starts between them, with rookie Kevin Elster getting 9 starts there, all in September (the Mets had a big lead in the East and could afford to give him a real look.) In the post-season, the Mets, having the best offense in the NL that year (arguably the best in MLB, because although there were 6 AL teams that scored more runs, none scored more than 50 runs more than the Mets, and the AL had the DH while the NL didn't) went with the veteran defender, Santana, to start every one of their 12 postseason games, removing him for a pinch hitter late in games in which they were trailing or the score was tied, which happened in 6 of the 12 games, including game 5 of the NLCS and game 6 of the World Series.

Following that logic, the Yanks are going with the defender, Verdugo, over the hitter, Dominguez, but there are two differences.

1) The Mets had 4 hitters in the MVP voting, including Carter and Hernandez, who finished 3rd and 4th, and had 6 starters with an OPS above league average, plus a platoon situation in left which included Mookie Wilson, Mitchell and Danny Heep, all of whom also had an OPS above 100, and shortstop was their only offensive weak spot. The have a very top-heavy offense with Judge and Soto as world-beaters. The other Yankee hitters with an OPS above league average are Stanton (OPS+ 119), who is very inconsistent and vulnerable against high velocity, Chisholm (107), Wells (103) and Torres (101). The Yanks might not be in a good position to trade offense for defense, but that's the way their opening their attempt to win a title. 
2) Dominguez hasn't hit well since his recall, and the Yanks have no guarantee he'll hit better than Verdugo against good and elite pitching in the post-season.

It can be argued that left field just isn't as important defensively as shortstop, and that's true, but for (again) two reasons:

1) Left field at the Stadium is enormous in the left-center gap, and the tight corner makes it difficult to play, until the fielder gains enough experience.
2) Dominguez helped blow 2 games with poor play; one against the Mariners in Seattle, one at the Stadium against the Orioles.

I wish I could be sure Dominguez was fully ready to help them in left, and could be trusted to start in the post-season, but I can't really argue with the decision. Maybe the Yanks will get lucky and Verdugo will wake up out of his offensive coma. He's been Somewhat better the last 24 games: .268/.305/.378/.683, as opposed to the entirety of his collapse after the great game in Boston in June: 78 games started, .205/.267/.287/.554 with 39 runs, 4 HR, 20 RBI, 27 BB and 54 K. That stretch is more or less the same as Kevin Kiermeier's brutal season, but without being able to play center on a regular basis, and over 50% more plate appearances than Kiermeier.

Excited to see what Duke Ellis brings to the post-season!

I think the Yankees just kinda ran out of time on Dominguez this season. If they really were full in on him this season they should have brought him up a month earlier to get as many MLB reps as possible. I think he has a lot of potential and will be a star eventually, but his lack of MLB experience so far has showed and they cant be having rookie mistakes in the playoffs if he's not going to perform offensively either. He might get a big hit here or there in this post season somewhere, but with the way the Yankees handled his 2024 I dunno how it can be expected for him to perform at a high level this post season consistently.

 So true.