Yankees Mailbag: Analyzing prospects and marvelous run-prevention on errors

Good afternoon everyone, it’s time for another edition of the mailbag. Remember to send in your questions for our weekly call by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

Noel B. asks: Where is the team at with Jasson Dominguez? The hype for him was incredible and here we are a few years into his tenure and he is still at Low-A? Is the organization at a point now where they should be aggressively moving him through the minors, see what you have?

Hype aside, it’s important to once again iterate that Jasson Dominguez is a 19-year-old prospect. He’s going to take some time to get going and that’s okay, but plenty of people have grown skeptical after his rough start in his debut as a professional last year. Dominguez started out this year slow as well, slashing .225/.247/.324 with one homer at the end of April, but he’s turned it on since.

Dominguez’s season stats now show a respectable .263/.365/.430 mark with seven homers, good for a .795 OPS and 132 wRC+. It’s not been a tearing-up-the-minors performance, but it’s significant growth for a young prospect. If he can hold this up or improve through the summer, then a promotion to Hudson Valley this year isn’t out of the question. If he holds his own there, then you could start to dream about Dominguez climbing up the farm system.

Jtc4heels asks: Why aren’t we hearing much about Cooper Bowman, second baseman with High-A Hudson Valley? The kid seems to be flat out raking!

The Yankees sure seem to have found someone with their fourth-round pick last year. Bowman played in 30 games as a professional last year, 27 of them coming with the Low-A Tampa Tarpons, and he began this year in High-A Hudson Valley. Bowman’s bat has been one of the few in the organization to not start out cold, and he’s been steady throughout the year as a solid middle infield prospect. That includes getting some action at shortstop, which would be a major plus for Bowman’s development if he can handle both positions. Hudson Valley has found him to be a useful leadoff batter, and he could pair nicely with last year’s first-round pick Trey Sweeney as the second-tier of middle infield prospects to keep an eye on in the system.

Exie_in_Manila asks: The throw that Ji-Man Choi couldn’t keep in his glove that allowed a run to score as Trevino hustled to first made me think: how well have the Yankees done in minimizing giving up unearned runs? How well are they doing compared to the rest of MLB, and how does this compare to last year? I get the impression they’re much better this year. If so, what could be the reasons?

The Yankees have been better than anyone in baseball in this regard, thanks to their improved defense around the infield and top-tier pitching performances from the entire staff. New York has allowed 214 runs this season at the time of writing, and of those 206 were earned runs. That means that the Yankees have allowed just eight unearned runs all year, easily the best in baseball. The Cardinals are second with 12 unearned runs, and then the Mets are third with 15 unearned runs.

The second thing to consider in this equation, however, is that you have to make errors to have unearned runs (or have Manfred runners, but it’s difficult to pull up data on those unearned runs unfortunately). The Yankees have made the second-fewest errors, tied with the Padres at 27, while the Cardinals and Mets have made 29 and 35, respectively. After combing through our main three teams’ scoreboards, the Yankees and Cardinals both allowed three Manfred runners to score while the Mets have allowed one. Thus, we can push the number down to just five unearned runs due to errors all season for the Yankees — an incredible number so far.