A Mars landing marked another day of spring training reps.
If Anthony Volpe’s spring debut is to be remembered, Monday night’s offensive performance — an 8-5 Yankees win over the Tigers in Tampa — was one to forget: The Yankees’ top pick came on the plate twice and landed in two double plays.
Obviously, this one exhibition game does nothing to lessen Volpe’s sky-high ceiling; If anything, his long-term perspective improved due to his solid performance at second base. A dart throw at the plate with the infield and a runner trying to score highlighted his smooth glove work that night.
The other interesting youngster who received the starting nod, Oswaldo Cabrera, overcame a field error in third field to grab a jump stitch on a liner in fifth. On the offensive side, he notched an RBI single with a frozen rope down right center:
Cabrera drove home Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who worked two six-pitch-at-bats in his bid to keep his position short on the Yankees’ depth chart.
Martian Jasson Domínguez landed in midfield to start the fifth. At the plate in the seventh, he looked goofy as he let go of the racquet on a change, but promptly set up the next pitch down the middle for a single. He came around to score with a double from Tayler Aguilar. Aguilar, who was selected in the 15th round last summer, also knocked out Tigers contender Colt Keith, who attempted to score with a fly-out at the top of eighth.
Domínguez also left and scored in eighth place.
On the pitching side, Luis Severino’s fastball looked sharp in his first spring tune. The heater scored five puffs in 27 pitches. Unfortunately for the right-hander, he only had a touch of soft stuff for 18 pitches. The cutter and pusher looked particularly rusty as they didn’t score a single puff over 15 offerings and a cutter landed over the midfield fence:
In an interview with Meredith Marakovits after his outing, Sevy expressed no concern about his breakers, suggesting he had achieved his goal for the gig – to come out healthy.
Severino mentioned that his slider usually requires more tinkering to prepare for the regular season. He tinkered a lot that outing, throwing his cutter and slider a total of 34 percent of the time, a significant increase from his 28.6 percent last year. He was particularly leaning more on the cutter, a playing field the Yankees seem to have emphasized this spring with players like Clarke Schmidt, so it’ll be interesting to see if that trend continues into the season for Sevy as well.
Wandy Peralta also brought in his pitches. The left-hander sat a tad higher on his sinker and scored three puffs on his changeup. He allowed a few groundstrokes, but none came off the bat at 90 mph.
Overall, tonight’s competition was mostly spring training as usual. The regulars didn’t have their best stuff and some surprising youngsters like Aguilar took advantage of that. Although this catch came somewhat out of the blue:
Otherwise, the Yankees will be looking to keep their spring streak going against the newly extended Jeffrey Springs and the Rays tomorrow. Prospect Sean Boyle, who had a 3.71 ERA in 155.1 innings in double- and triple-A last year, will get the ball for the Yanks in a first-pitch matinee at 1:05 p.m. ET.
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