A Martian landing highlighted another day of spring training rehearsals.
If Anthony Volpe’s spring debut was unforgettable, his Monday night offensive performance — an 8-5 Yankees victory over the Tigers in Tampa — was one to forget: The Yankees’ top prospect came to home plate twice and sunk in two double pieces.
Obviously, this exhibition game alone does nothing to diminish Volpe’s dizzying ceiling; if anything, his long-term prospects have improved due to his solid performance at second base. A dart throw to the plate with the infield and a runner trying to score highlighted his slick glove work on the night.
The other interesting youngster to get the go-ahead to start, Oswaldo Cabrera, overcame a field error in the third to take a dive on an ocean liner in the fifth. On the offensive end, he landed an RBI single with a frozen rope to the center right:
Cabrera brought home Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who worked two six-pitch hitters in his quest to maintain his position atop the Yankees depth chart in the short term.
The Martian, Jasson Domínguez, landed in center field to start the fifth. At plate in the seventh, he looked silly to drop the bat on a substitution, but quickly fielded the next pitch down the middle for a single. He came to score on a double from Tayler Aguilar. Aguilar, a 15th-round pick last summer, also knocked out Tigers prospect Colt Keith, who was trying to score on a fly ball in the top of the eighth.
Domínguez also walked and scored in the eighth.
On the pitching side, Luis Severino’s fastball looked crisp in his first spring tune-up. The heater registered five puffs in 27 pitches. Unfortunately for the right-hander, he only had one puff over 18 lengths of soft stuff. The knife and slider looked particularly rusty, as they didn’t feel a puff out of 15 offers and a knife ended up over the center field fence:
In an interview with Meredith Marakovits after his exit, Sevy did not express concern with his circuit breakers, indicating that he had achieved his goal for the appearance – coming out of it feeling healthy.
Severino mentioned that his slider usually requires more tinkering to prepare for the regular season. He tinkered around a lot on this outing, throwing his cutter and cursor 34% of the time, marking a huge increase from his rate of 28.6% last year. He’s particularly leaned more on the cutter, a ground the Yankees have apparently been emphasizing this spring with the likes of Clarke Schmidt, so it’ll be interesting to see if that trend continues into the season for Sevy as well.
Wandy Peralta also got her pitches. The southpaw sat a tick higher on his lead and notched three puffs on his change. He allowed a few base hits, but none went off-bat even at 90 miles per hour.
All in all, tonight’s contest was largely spring training as usual. The regulars didn’t have their best gear, and some surprising youngsters like Aguilar took advantage of it. Although, this capture was a bit out of the blue:
Otherwise, the Yankees will look to maintain their spring streak tomorrow against Jeffrey Springs and the newly extended Rays. Prospect Sean Boyle, who threw a 3.71 ERA in 155.1 double- and triple-A innings last year, will get the ball for the Yanks in the morning with the first pitch at 1:05 p.m. ET.
The score of the box
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