The overdue Ben Rice/Ben’s Original partnership has arrived. Ben landed an endorsement deal with the rice brand and they partnered with No Kid Hungry to provide 22,000 meals for children (22,000 as a nod to his No. 22), so there’s more to it than a cheeky play on his name. Not everyone gets that Under Armour or Jordan contract. You’ve gotta take your endorsement bucks where you can get ‘em.
Anyway, I forgot to put this note in Thursday’s post: Opening Day was the first time the Yankees won a game in which Aaron Judge went 0-for-5 and they didn’t hit a home run since a 4-0 win in Toronto on June 18th, 2002. It was the first time ever that they scored seven runs despite no homers and a Judge 0-for-5. The Yankees have scored seven runs without a homer a bunch of times since then his debut 2016, but Judge was always involved somehow. Not on Opening Day though.
Here now is what’s coming up this weekend:
Friday at Giants: RHP Cam Schlittler vs. LHP Robbie Ray (4:30pm ET on YES)
Saturday at Giants: RHP Will Warren vs. RHP Tyler Mahle (7pm ET on FOX)
Sunday: off-day
Three-game series with three different start times on three different networks. Baseball is truly back. Eric Fisher reports YES is ramping up coverage this year and adding an hour (!) to the pregame show and 30 minutes to the postgame show. I’ve never been much of a pregame/postgame person, but there’s an extra 90 minutes of coverage for every YES game this year, if you want it.
Also, Triple-A Scranton’s season begins this afternoon in Buffalo. Brendan Beck is the scheduled starter. Carlos Lagrange started Monday and Luis Gil threw a sim game Wednesday, so neither lined up to pitch today. Elmer Rodríguez and one of the minor league contract veterans figure to join Beck, Gil, and Lagrange in Scranton's rotation. (Double-A Somerset, High-A Hudson Valley, and Low-A Tampa start their seasons next Friday.)
It’s been a busy week here and I didn’t take it easy enough following my procedure Monday (I was feeling it Wednesday), so I’m gonna keep it brief today and roll right into the mailbag. In case you missed anything, here are my annual bold predictions, my pre-Opening Day thoughts (including stuff on the other 29 teams), and my recap of the Opening Day win.
Mailbag Questions of the Week
Got a mailbag follow up. A few weeks ago I answered a question about plate discipline stats (chase rate, etc.) from this season, which will be based on the ABS strike zone, compared to pre-2026, which used the standard Statcast zone. Turns out FanGraphs has both numbers for pre-2026, the standard Statcast zone and a recalculated ABS version. There’s “ABS” and “Legacy” under the plate discipline tab. The numbers differ by a good deal in some cases. Aaron Judge’s 2024 chase rate was 17.7% with the Statcast zone. It’s (a still excellent) 18.7% with ABS. ABS will be my go-to moving forward because it’s personalized.
Neil asks: How likely is it that at the end of the season we look back and agree the Yanks would have been better off not to resign Grisham, but have gone with an outfield of Belli in CF, a platoon of Dominguez and Grichuk in LF and spend the $22M to bolster their roster elsewhere (including perhaps an upgrade to Grichuk )?
This is not directed at Neil or anyone in particular: I feel like I’ve gone completely insane reading the Trent Grisham/Jasson Domínguez discourse over the last week or two. If the Yankees were dead set on leaving a lineup spot open for Domínguez (obviously they weren’t), wasn’t the move bringing Grisham back and not Cody Bellinger? Give me Grisham for one year at $22.025M over Bellinger for five years at $35M a pop eight days a week and twice on Sundays.
Bottom line, the Yankees are a better team with Bellinger and Grisham in the outfield than they are with Bellinger or Grisham and Domínguez, and besides, Domínguez didn’t go anywhere. He’s (probably) next in line for a call up whenever someone gets hurt. We could talk about better ways to spend the $22.025M, but a) what does that buy you these days, and b) having $35M to spend would’ve solved more problems.
Spending it on someone better than Randal Grichuk is a nice idea in theory, but who is that player? The righty hitting outfield market was awful this winter. Would Harrison Bader have turned down a starting job and $24M across two years from the Giants to take similar money as a part-time player for the Yankees? If the Yankees were to spend that $22.025M differently, they’re probably throwing $9M at Austin Hays to buy him away from his full-time spot with the White Sox, and spending $13M or so for Pete Fairbanks or a similarly combustible reliever.
I’m glad Domínguez had a great Spring Training (.347/.389/.673 and 166 wRC+) but it is ultimately no more meaningful than his poor showing in the Dominican Winter League. I wish there was a way to get Domínguez into the lineup. I don’t think Triple-A will do him much good at this point in his career. I also understand the Yankees are a better team with Bellinger and Grisham, and that Domínguez didn’t force the Yankees to leave a lineup spot for him. He gets a share of the blame here.
(The Grisham disrespect is getting ridiculous. What’s the problem with a one-year deal for a 29-year-old center fielder coming off a 34-homer season that the underlying numbers not only support, but suggest he may have underperformed? If he had that exact same season with any other team last year, the signing would be on “best move of the offseason” lists. On the list of Yankees problems, Grisham and his contract are nowhere near the top.)
Mike asks: I’m sure there are plenty of Jasson questions this week: What are the rules of moving players between minor league teams? Could Jasson move between AAA and AA if either team faces a lefty, to get him as many at-bats against lefties as possible? Could it make sense to have Jasson bat mostly right handed, regardless of the pitcher’s handedness, just to get more reps as a righty batter?
Moving Jasson Domínguez between levels so he can face more lefties isn’t practical. The travel isn’t that bad (if Scranton and Somerset are even home at the same time), but it is travel, and someone has to go in the other direction to complete the roster move. All that for maybe three at-bats against a lefty that night, more likely two because teams keep minor league pitchers on such tight pitch counts these days. Facing lefties on the Trajekt machine is way easier, and likely more beneficial.
As for batting right-handed most of the time regardless of the pitcher’s handedness, I’m not sure that will help much because everything is so different facing same-side pitchers. Domínguez has never seen a slider that breaks away from him or a sinker that runs in. His good side is the heavy side of the platoon. I’d rather not risk messing with that in an effort to improve his righty swing. If he’s gonna drop switch-hitting, even temporarily, then drop the righty swing. Don’t put the lefty swing on the shelf just to get more righty swings in.
Kevin asks: Do you have any idea what Jasson’s living situation was in NY last year? With the move to Scranton does he have to scramble and get a new lease etc? I know this happens all the time but I am sure he was “living like a major leaguer” and now has to pivot quickly to AAA life. Is his comp changed as well?
I don’t know what Jasson Domínguez’s living situation was last year but a lot of young players (especially guys without families and a roster spot that isn’t secure) live in a hotel during the season. They check out when the team’s on the road and check back in when they arrive home, and often change hotels depending on the price. Some guys get a place with a month-to-month lease depending on the city/availability. These days teams must provide housing or a housing stipend for minor leaguers (who don’t have to live there if they don’t want to), so Jasson doesn’t have to sweat that. He can always live wherever the Yankees put up the RailRiders. Salary is definitely lower in Triple-A. The minimum for a 40-man roster player in the minors is $63,600 this year, though Domínguez will be well north of that as a player with more than a year of service time. My guess (and this is just a guess) is his Triple-A salary is over $125,000.
Nick asks: I know this is weird timing to ask this question on opening day, but the news of NBA expansion got me thinking.
1. We've heard MLB would like to expand too for a while... what is the delay?
2. Is it just me or do the other leagues all seem to have their stuff together a lot more than MLB does?
Maybe its just because I pay more attention to baseball, but I feel like I never hear about impending lockouts in the other major sports. They seem like they know they have a good thing going and they work to keep it going. MLB feels like they're constantly threatening to skip entire seasons. Is this just because the players have it better in MLB with no cap and guaranteed contracts?
MLB is in the middle of the longest expansion drought since the league first expanded in 1961, but we’ll get it relatively soon now that the Athletics are building a new stadium and the Rays are down the road in getting one. Getting them situated had to be done before expansion. Rob Manfred said he wants the expansion wheels in motion before he retires in January 2029. I think there will be 32 teams (Charlotte? Nashville? Portland?) no later than 2032, and possibly earlier.
The Rays – the Rays! – just sold for $1.7 billion and the Padres might sell for $3.5 billion. Figure the expansion fee will be over $2 billion, maybe closer to $3 billion, and you have to bring in two teams at once. Let’s go on the low side and call it $4 billion total in expansion fees. That’s a $133M payday per team. I’m surprised the owners have held out as long as they have, but they won’t much longer. Expansion is coming soon because, like everything else MLB does, it will make the owners a lot of money.
As for the lockout talk, it’s so self-defeating. We just had a great World Series, a great World Baseball Classic, and Shohei Ohtani is the most globally popular baseball player ever, yet you can’t go a day without reading something about the sport shutting down in a few months. It’s unnecessary and it does nothing but hurt the sport. The cat’s out of the bag though. Manfred has been talking about a lockout for over a year now. He didn’t start the lockout talk, but he’s certainly fanned the flames.
George asks: I've become more and more disgusted with the quality of baseball broadcasts. On opening day, who in their right mind at MLB thought having a guy screaming at the top of his lungs for 15 minutes pre game, was a good idea? Same for the dumb dancing girls at player introductions. The in game manager interviews are bad, but the miked up players in the field, are even worse. Do you think this sort of things is here to stay? Are the players/managers paid for their in game "interviews" Thanks, Disgruntled George
I don’t want to say this stuff is here to stay forever because forever is a long time, but it has only gotten worse the last few years, so I wouldn’t count on it being rolled back anytime soon. The pregame concerts and screaming hype man are easy enough to ignore. The in-game interviews drive me nuts. If we’re lucky, we’ll see two or three funny or interesting moments per year with those things. By and large they add nothing of value and we often miss action (even if it’s just a pitch taken for a ball or strike) because they’re showing these things. Every sport is heading down this path but baseball is the worst offender. (Thursday's Mets vs. Pirates game was so much better than the Netflix broadcast. It was a ballgame, not a talk show with baseball in the background.)
(Send your questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com. The random Yankee series is on hiatus, but feel free to send in requests for if/when it returns.)