WASHINGTON, D.C. — Aaron Boone had a chance Friday to praise one of the few Yankees hitters who had stayed warm through a miserable stretch. He chose to make a challenge instead.
Jasson Dominguez was hitting. But Boone pushed for more, and what he said before the game left little room for comfort. The 23-year-old outfielder’s numbers, the manager argued, did not match the quality of his at-bats or the size of his talent.
A few hours later, Dominguez’s bat erupted. He homered from the left side, then singled from the right side to start the winning rally in the ninth, and the Yankees beat the Nationals 5-3 at Nationals Park. It was the kind of night the Yankees have been waiting on him to string together.
It was a young player responding to a public prod with the only reply that silences one.
The bar Boone set before first pitch
Dominguez entered Friday batting .333 over his previous eight games, a rare bright spot for a lineup that had scored the fewest runs in baseball since June 18. Yet he ended the night hitting only .242 with a .709 OPS across 34 games, numbers Boone finds too low for the player he sees every day.
Boone did not soften the assessment. He praised the daily process, then made clear the results had not followed.
“I expect more,” Boone said before the game.
The manager singled out one figure in particular, an on-base percentage he considers beneath Dominguez’s ability.
“His on-base percentage should not be whatever it is,” Boone said, referring to a .276 mark.
Boone framed the gap not as a slump but as a breakthrough that had yet to arrive. He said Dominguez had not struggled since coming up, but had not caught fire either.
He tied the wait to bad luck as much as anything, pointing to hard contact that kept finding gloves.
“He’s hit some balls on the screws right at people,” Boone said.
A homer, a single and a rally
Dominguez stopped hitting them at people in the fourth inning. Batting left-handed, he drove a solo home run to the opposite field, a shot Statcast projected at more than 400 feet, to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. The swing was exactly the kind of squared-up contact Boone had been waiting to see fall.
The lead did not survive. Keibert Ruiz and James Wood homered on back-to-back pitches off Tim Hill in the seventh, and Washington went ahead 3-2.
Dominguez was not done. With one out in the ninth, batting right-handed this time, he singled off Nationals reliever Matt Krook to put the tying run aboard. Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed with a two-run homer to the second deck, and Austin Wells added another. The Yankees won 5-3.
The single was the quiet half of the Yankees rally. It was also the runner who scored the tying run, the reason Chisholm’s swing meant a lead rather than a solo shot.
Afterward, Dominguez kept his explanation as plain as his manager’s challenge had been pointed.
“I feel like I’ve been getting better,” Dominguez said.
He described a narrow focus, the approach of a player trying to control the only thing he can.
“Just go and compete, and that’s been my only focus,” Dominguez said.
Why the Yankees need this version of him
Boone’s impatience is rooted in need as much as standards. The Yankees are carrying on without Aaron Judge, sidelined since May 31 with a fractured rib, and Giancarlo Stanton, out with a calf injury. Dominguez, often hitting in the top half of the order, is one of the few in-house answers to that void.
The switch-hitter has the profile of a Yankees difference maker, speed and power to all fields, the traits Boone said could let him do special things once the production turns consistent. That upside is why the manager pushes rather than pats.
Dominguez remains a work in progress in right field, where his defense is still developing. Steadier work at the plate would make those growing pains easier for the Yankees to carry, especially with the lineup thinned by injury.
His path this season has been uneven. He opened the year in Triple-A despite a strong spring, earned a call-up when Stanton went down, then lost time to a shoulder injury. The talent that made him one of the sport’s most watched prospects has flashed for the Yankees without yet settling into a groove.
A challenge met, with the season still to prove it
The Yankees trail Tampa Bay by four games in the AL East and continue their series in Washington on Saturday. They have won three of five and stacked 25 hits over the last two games, signs of a lineup shaking off weeks of silence.
Ryan Weathers gave them 5 1/3 strong innings, holding the majors’ highest-scoring offense to one run despite two errors behind him from Amed Rosario. Paul Goldschmidt ended an 0-for-34 skid with a first-inning single. The offense that had gone missing is stirring on several fronts at once.
For Dominguez, one night settles nothing about a season that has bounced between the minors, the injured list and the occasional glimpse of stardom. But it answered his manager, directly, in the exact category Boone flagged.
Boone wanted the breakthrough. Dominguez gave the Yankees a game shaped by two swings from two sides of the plate. Whether it becomes the fire the manager is waiting for is the question the second half will decide.
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