Why won't the Yankees leave Jasson Dominguez in for a full game?

On Tuesday night, Jasson Dominguez blasted his first homer of the 2025 season, and it was a beauty. It should have been the catalyst for a comeback victory, but the New York Yankees' bullpen imploded in the eighth inning in their eventual 7-5 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Dominguez went 2-for-3 with two runs scored on the night and continued to hold his own in left field. Fingers crossed, but we've yet to see any defensive issues in the early going, which is a huge plus because that was the main concern heading into 2025.

But there is one issue. And it has to do with the Yankees' usage of Dominguez in the first four games of the year. With the exception of the team's 20-9 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Saturday, Dominguez has been yanked early from the three other games in favor of a defensive replacement.

It was understandable on Opening Day during a tight 4-1 game with new closer Devin Williams making his debut in pinstripes. But why in a 12-3 win on Sunday? And why deprive him of a chance to get those nerves under control in close 4-2 game on Tuesday?

After Tuesday's loss, manager Aaron Boone hinted that this was part of Dominguez's development plan. But it's hard to see how removing him in the seventh inning helps at all with the young slugger's familiarity and comfortability at the big league level.

Yankees can't keep pulling Jasson Dominguez from late-game situations

The Yankees, of course, don't want to overwhelm him with high-leverage situation after high-leverage situation, but he's going to have to play important late-game defense at some point. And saving that for when the games matter even more hardly makes sense.

Again, this is all likely rooted in logic, but it has certainly raised some eyebrows because of the imbalance. The Yankees admitted before the season started that they were willing to let Dominguez go through "growing pains" in left field. After his shaky start to spring training, he's seemed to have handled the position well, or at least adequately enough.

Part of those "growing pains" will be adjusting when the pressure ramps up — not getting replaced at the first sign of when he actually needs to be trusted with the glove.

It's just more odd treatment of up-and-coming Yankees players. Anthony Volpe was thrown into the fire, playing in 319 out of a possible 324 games to start his career despite clear shortcomings. He was instructed to work through all the problems and ramp up his volume despite never playing in that many games before. Same goes for Austin Wells, who was overused in 2024 and left in the cleanup spot for far too long as his struggles mounted.

Now we're seeing the opposite with Dominguez, who, yes struggled last season, but hasn't given anybody reason to exercise extreme caution thus far in 2025. Let's maybe let him finish out a close game this week so we don't have to keep talking about this.