The arrival of Jasson Dominguez to the majors was not supposed to be the highlight of the Yankees’ September.
This team was built to win in 2023, not to be looking ahead to 2024 and beyond.
Less than a month ago, it seemed like they might have a chance to right themselves and make something of the season.
The Yankees were 57-52 on Aug. 3 and just 2 ½ games behind Toronto for the final AL wild card spot, with only the Red Sox between them and the Blue Jays.
While the Yankees hadn’t made any significant additions at the deadline, they hadn’t sold, either.
And with Aaron Judge back — at least in some form — from the sprained toe that sidelined him for most of the previous two months and Gerrit Cole pitching at a Cy Young-level, there was cause for some belief about making something of the season and reaching the playoffs.
But over the course of a little more than a week, they lost Domingo German to the restricted list on Aug. 2 after a clubhouse incident led the pitcher to seek treatment for alcohol abuse, Anthony Rizzo was placed on the IL to deal with post-concussion symptoms on Aug. 3 and Nestor Cortes — who made one start after coming off the IL — was sidelined again on Aug. 11, this time with a left hamstring strain.
From Aug. 4 to Aug. 27, the Yankees went 5-16, with a nine-game losing streak mixed in, as their season spiraled downwards, leaving them a season-high six-games under .500 and 11 games back of the last wild card spot.
A last-place finish seems very realistic.
So what happened?
“It just went sideways,’’ Rizzo said recently.
Post Sports+ spent last weekend with the Yankees as they lost another series to the Rays in Tampa Bay and asked players and coaches just how, in Rizzo’s words, a season that began with such promise, went “sideways.”
They’ve finished over .500 in just one month, when they went 19-10 in May.
Plagued by injuries, bad luck and a horrendous first season in pinstripes by Carlos Rodon — and a horrid potentially final season in pinstripes by Luis Severino, the Yankees have little to play for the rest of the way.
The bullpen — as well as the rotation — underperformed and the lineup hasn’t produced, even after the midseason dismissal of hitting coach Dillon Lawson.
While most in the clubhouse pointed to the numerous setbacks the team suffered after the deadline, many also acknowledged the season didn’t look too good, even at that point.
“Even before the [deadline], we weren’t playing that well,’’ Aaron Boone said. “It had been challenging, and all those other injuries and things happened that made it tough. I felt we were right there to make a run, but I also knew we were struggling. In my mind, the tough stretch didn’t really start at the trade deadline. We were scuffling for a while.”
That’s because hardly anyone has lived up to expectations, other than Cole, Gleyber Torres and — when healthy — Judge.
“It’s easy for all of us to say in here, ‘This is not who we are,’” Rizzo said of the cellar-dwelling Yankees. “This year, this is who we are. We rode a fine line too much.”
And it resulted in a much different season than a year ago, when the Yankees jumped out to a historic start before slowing down in the second half and being swept out of the ALCS by the Astros.
“They’re two separate things,’’ Rizzo said of last year’s disappointing second half and this year’s disaster. “Every year is different and we just didn’t connect. You can’t pinpoint it to a certain thing. It’s just sometimes teams collide and everyone comes together and sometimes they don’t. Last year, we felt like we had that chemistry and vibe. This year, it hasn’t clicked.’
Cole said he’s “always optimistic,” which is why he was hopeful the team would get going in August.
“I thought things were gonna correct themselves to a certain extent,’’ Cole said. “Aaron was gonna come back, Rizzo would snap out of it. [DJ] LeMahieu was gonna snap out of it and [Giancarlo Stanton] was gonna get white hot. … I don’t think anyone thought this was a high-probability outcome at the beginning of the season, but you know anything can happen in any year.”
Said Stanton: “We’re nowhere near where we want to be since [the deadline] from a team aspect. You can pick apart so many things, but we didn’t produce the way we needed to to win. I am part of what hasn’t produced and I have to take accountability for that.”
“We put ourselves in a position where if something like that [losing streak] did happen, we’d be in a bad spot,’’ Rizzo said. “We didn’t give ourselves a margin for error [in the first half].”
What’s done is done and with the spotlight already on young players like Dominguez and Austin Wells — both of whom are expected to join the Yankees in Houston on Friday — thoughts also shift to making sure they don’t find themselves in a similar situation next season.
“We’re not gonna get used to this,’’ LeMahieu said.
Judge tried to look at whatever upside is left.
“We’ll see what the future holds,’’ Judge said in Detroit on Thursday. “We still got a lot of work to do here. When you go through a season like this, the most important thing is to keep pushing forward. If you dwell on what’s happened the past couple months, past couple days, past series, it’s going to linger on. We still got a month of baseball to play, so we gotta keep focusing on the next day. We’ll see what these young kids can do.”
Asked if he was worried about the state of the organization, Judge said, “We’ll get it fixed. We’ll get it fixed.”
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Telling stat
Heading into Thursday’s game in Detroit, Torres co-led (with Anthony Volpe) the Yankees with 57 RBIs, putting the two on pace to finish with just 69 each, the lowest mark — outside of the COVID-shortened 2020 season — to lead the franchise since 2016, when Starlin Castro and Didi Gregorius both finished with 70 RBIs. That also was the last time the Yankees failed to reach the postseason before this year.
Fountain of youth
Prior to the season, when Anthony Volpe was still trying to make the Opening Day roster, MLB Pipeline ranked the Yankees’ prospects like this: 1. Volpe, 2. Dominguez, 3. Oswald Peraza, 4. Wells, 5. Spencer Jones, 6. Everson Pereira.
Now, all but Jones is headed to the majors in 2023.
Right-handers Randy Vasquez (No. 14) and Jhony Brito (No. 27) also made their MLB debuts.
The results have been mixed.
Vasquez and Brito have shown some promise and Volpe has exceeded some of the organization’s expectations, especially on defense. But Peraza and Pereira have struggled since their call-ups and Dominguez is being rushed to the majors after just 37 plate appearances at Triple-A.
Additional reporting by Greg Joyce in Detroit