WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — At a minor league ballpark, a couple of promising Yankees youngsters sure looked like legitimate major league pieces for the present and the future.
Will Warren and Jasson Domínguez picked the same night for the best games of their young careers in a contest that might have meant as much to the 2025 Yankees as the 2030 Yankees.
Warren was excellent for 7 ¹/₃ strong innings, and Domínguez decided to one-up what had been his first two-home-run night by coming up with a three-homer night in a 10-2 blowout in front of 12,049 at a sold-out Sutter Health Park, the temporary home of a solid A’s team that looked overmatched Friday.
In Warren’s longest outing of his career, he allowed just four hits, was charged with one run that scored after he exited and struck his way out of most of the danger he encountered, arguably the most encouraging performance of the Yankees’ season.
You could also argue that Domínguez — who stroked one homer as a lefty in the third inning, another as a righty in the seventh and a third as a lefty in the eighth, a grand slam on a seven-RBI night — demonstrating his immense potential could be the best sight of the Yankees’ first month-plus.
For Warren, all of the glimpses of promise that the young, learning starter has shown were stitched together with one performance.
He lowered his ERA nearly by an entire run — from 5.65 to 4.75 — and produced as much hope as he has all year.
“Hopefully another step for him and another confidence booster for him,” manager Aaron Boone said of Warren, who had largely struggled for his first seven starts this campaign, keeping his rotation spot partly because the Yankees simply had no better option. “I think he knows he can be successful in this league. A night like tonight is validation for that.
“He was really good.”
The DFA of Carlos Carrasco this week may have served as an alarm that the club could no longer afford to receive so little from the back of its rotation.
The 25-year-old righty responded by keeping the A’s off-balance while striking out seven, walking just one and in complete control until allowing a pair of hits in the eighth.
Everything worked for the former top prospect trying to make good on his potential, inducing multiple whiffs on his four-seamer, sweeper, changeup and curveball.
“I’ve said it’s close. I meant that,” said Warren, who has been consistent in believing he has been on the cusp of figuring things out. “I think it comes down to executing our plan, and sometimes you miss a few inches outside, a guy gets on, it can change an entire game. … Tonight we executed our plan.”
Behind Warren, the Yankees (22-16) won a third consecutive game after losing three straight, beginning a six-game road trip well — and historically, in the case of Domínguez, who became the youngest player in franchise history to blast three homers in one game.
“It means a lot,” Domínguez said of his place in the record books. “To be able to write your name into history is a really good thing.”
In the third inning of a game in which Paul Goldschmidt had just cracked into with a solo homer, the lefty Domínguez made it back-to-back dingers by turning on a changeup from Osvaldo Bido and depositing it into the bullpen in right-center.
For his next trick, the righty Domínguez — a statistically much worse hitter — crushed a hanging curve from Hogan Harris into center to pad the Yankees’ lead in the seventh.
In what became a five-run, 10-batter eighth inning, Domínguez put the finishing touches on the greatest game of the 22-year-old’s life.
With Goldschmidt on first, Ben Rice on second and Aaron Judge on third, the lefty Domínguez got a 2-1, hard sinker from righty Elvis Alvarado and reversed the heater for a 387-foot shot to right-center.
“I was just telling myself: ‘No way,’” said Domínguez, who crushed three home runs on three very different pitches from both sides of the plate.
There has never been a doubt about the talent of one of the most hyped prospects in baseball history, drawing comparisons to Mickey Mantle virtually as soon as he signed as a teenager.
There has been some doubt about how soon he can burst through at the major league level, and perhaps the time is now.
“He does everything way above-average,” said Warren, who has seen Domínguez plenty in the minors and majors. “Definitely something special there.”
“Tonight was a very special night that I will remember,” Domínguez said.
