Injured Cody Bellinger replacing Jasson Dominguez defensively shows foolish lack of faith

The bar for "highlight reel plays" in left field might be a bit lower for Yankees rookie Jasson Dominguez than other, more experienced options. After all, baby steps include a bit of leeway around learning a new position at the major-league level.

Still, by any account, Dominguez was having a nice night against the Kansas City Royals on Monday in the Bronx. Give him as much or as little credit as you'd like for sprinting to the spot and catching up to a few hard-hit liners, but his leaping, contorting play to save Carlos Carrasco a few sweat beads in the fourth inning was legitimately above-average by any metric (please, do not show me the metrics that do not say that).

If the shorthanded Yankees were ever going to give Dominguez the latter two innings defensively as a show of faith, Monday was the night. Cody Bellinger, by their own admission, was laid up receiving treatment on a back injury. Trent Grisham was starting in his place. Outside of motioning Oswaldo Cabrera to the outfield, the Yankees didn't really have any extra defensive subs available.

And yet ... in the top of the eighth inning, there was Bellinger, taking Dominguez's place - and even taking an at-bat in the bottom of the frame. Feeling better already?

Yankees' Jasson Dominguez replaced on defense by injured Cody Bellinger vs. Kansas City Royals

If anything, Dominguez's defensive stumbles have largely been a buried narrative and a thing of the past since early spring training. Unless something is nagging the Martian, necessitating his departure, removing him when he was riding high made very little sense.

Removing him in favor of someone Aaron Boone claimed pregame that he wanted to be cautious with, in the midst of a 13-day stretch filled with 13 games, is another pebble entirely.

We're going to have to wait for the postgame on this one. Either Bellinger successfully argued back into the gameplan and Boone still can't figure out how much faith he has in his future star rookie, or there's something much more worrisome afoot. Got to hope for pure foolishness, in this case.