NEW YORK — Look at where Jasson Dominguez has been hitting, and a strange picture emerges. In July, manager Aaron Boone slotted him second, third four times, fourth and fifth. Premium spots, night after night, for a 23-year-old batting .242.
That is a lot of faith in a young outfielder who has not earned it at the plate. And in the weeks before a trade deadline, faith that outsized can mean something other than belief.
It can mean a showcase.
With the Aug. 3 deadline closing in and a roster full of holes, the Yankees may be doing more than developing Dominguez. They may be displaying him, building his value in the middle of the order while the front office decides whether his long-term future is in the Bronx or in someone else’s uniform.
A lineup that says more than the words
The Yankees have real needs, and they are not hiding them. Catcher, shortstop and bullpen help top the list as the deadline nears. To acquire any of it, the club has to give something up, and its No. 1 prospect, infielder George Lombard Jr., is reported to be off the table.
That leaves Dominguez as one of the most valuable chips Brian Cashman can move. A former top prospect with speed, switch-hit power and years of team control, he still carries the name recognition and upside that other clubs covet, even if the production has lagged.
The batting order is the tell. Boone has repeatedly placed Dominguez in spots reserved for a middle-of-the-order threat, despite a .242 average and a .710 OPS across 34 games. A team that had soured on a player does not hit him cleanup. A team trying to remind rivals of his ceiling might.
The timing fits the calendar. The higher the platform, the higher the perceived value before Aug. 3.
What the reporting suggests
The idea is not pure speculation. It tracks with what national reporters covering the Yankees have described about the club’s posture entering the deadline. The Athletic’s Brendan Kuty laid out the internal preference in blunt terms this week.
“They would probably trade both of them,” Kuty said of the Yankees’ outfield surplus.
Kuty added that the Yankees likely need to keep one of the two young outfielders, and that the club currently favors Dominguez. That preference is what makes a showcase logical. You feature the one whose value you most want to raise.
Kuty also captured how the rest of the league reads a Yankees team stuck four games back and desperate to reload.
“Teams sense that the Yankees are desperate,” Kuty said.
A club that public about its needs invites hard bargaining. Elevating Dominguez’s profile is one way to answer it, turning a scuffling bat into a more persuasive trade piece.
The player waiting in Triple-A
The reason a Dominguez trade is even thinkable sits at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Spencer Jones, one of the organization’s most highly regarded sluggers, offers the Yankees an internal replacement, which changes the math on moving Dominguez.
Their major league lines are nearly identical. Jones hit .233 with a .687 OPS in a 30-game debut stint. Dominguez has produced almost the same. On paper, swapping one for the other costs the Yankees little offense right now.
The separation shows up elsewhere. Jones grades as the steadier defender where Dominguez has been a liability, and his batted-ball data hints at more power, with an average exit velocity near 95 mph and a hard-hit rate above 60 percent.
Dominguez keeps the edge in speed, with 95th-percentile sprint numbers to Jones’ 83rd-percentile mark, but the gap is not wide enough to settle the outfield picture by itself. With Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger locked into long-term money and Trent Grisham on an expiring deal, the Yankees have one outfield slot to fill for the future. Jones and Dominguez are the internal answers. One of them is likely surplus.
A career that never quite broke out
Just before the Yankees’ 5-3 win over the Nationals, manager Aaron Boone set the bar higher for Dominguez.
“I expect more,” Boone said. “His on-base percentage should not be whatever it is. He’s hit some balls on the screws right at people.”
Dominguez responded with a 400-ft blast that handed the Yankees a 2-1 lead. Again in the ninth, he hit a single starting the rally that culminated in a win with a homer from Jazz Chisholm.
The Martian arrived as a five-tool phenom, and the label has outpaced the results. Across 183 major league games spanning four seasons, he has hit 21 home runs with 69 RBIs, 35 stolen bases and a .722 OPS. Useful, but short of stardom.
This season has followed the pattern. He opened the year in Triple-A despite a strong spring, returned when injuries to Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Grisham thinned the outfield, then lost time to a shoulder issue of his own. The consistency, at the plate and in the field, has not arrived.
None of that erases the appeal to another team. A controllable 23-year-old with this profile is exactly the kind of buy-low target contenders and rebuilders alike chase. For the Yankees, that appeal is the point. It is what makes him tradeable.
A deadline decision with a title at stake
The stakes reach beyond one roster spot. After splitting their series with Tampa Bay, the Yankees still hold a 10.3 percent chance to win the World Series by FanGraphs’ math, second only to the Los Angeles Dodgers. A team that close to contention has reason to convert future value into present help.
Moving Dominguez, with Jones ready to step in, would let the Yankees address catcher, shortstop or the bullpen without gutting their farm system or touching Lombard. It is the kind of trade a win-now club makes when a role and a replacement line up.
Nothing is decided. Dominguez remains a Yankee, still hitting in the heart of the order, still capable of the flashes that made him a phenom. But the way he is being used, in the weeks before the deadline, looks less like a commitment and more like a presentation.
Whether it ends in an extension of trust or a trade will be settled by Aug. 3. Until then, every prime-time at-bat doubles as an audition, and the audience may not be wearing pinstripes.
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