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WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — At a minor league ballpark, a couple promising Yankees youngsters sure looked like legitimate major league pieces for the present and the future.
Will Warren and Jasson Domínguez decided to post the best games of their young careers in a contest that might have meant as much to the 2025 Yankees as the 2030 Yankees.
Warren was excellent for 7 ¹/₃ strong innings, and Domínguez decided to one-up what had been his first two-homer night by coming up with a three-homer night in an authoritative, 10-2 victory in front of 12,049 at a sold-out Sutter Health Park, the temporary home of a solid A’s team that looked overmatched Friday.
In Warren’s longest outing of his career, he allowed just four hits, was charged with one run that scored after he exited and struck his way out of most of the danger he encountered, arguably the most encouraging performance of the Yankees’ season.
You could also argue that Domínguez — who stroked one homer as a lefty in the third inning, one as a righty in the seventh and then another as a lefty in the eighth, a grand slam on a seven-RBI night — demonstrating his immense potential could be the best sight of the Yankees’ first month-plus.
For Warren, all of the glimpses of promise that the young, learning starter has shown were stitched together with one performance.
He lowered his ERA nearly by an entire run — from 5.65 to 4.75 — and showed as much hope as he has all season.
Warren largely struggled for his first seven starts this campaign, keeping his rotation spot partly because the Yankees simply had no better option.
The DFA of Carlos Carrasco this week may have served as an alarm that the club could no longer afford to receive so little from the back of its rotation.
The 25-year-old righty responded by keeping the A’s off-balance while striking out seven, walking just one and in complete control until allowing a pair of hits in the eighth.
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Everything worked for the former top prospect trying to make good on his potential, drawing multiple whiffs on his four-seamer, sweeper, changeup and curveball.
Behind Warren and Domínguez, the Yankees (22-16) won a third consecutive game after losing three straight, beginning a six-game road trip well — and historically, in Dominguez’s case.
In the third inning of a game that Paul Goldschmidt had just cracked into with a solo homer, the lefty Domínguez made it back-to-back dingers by turning on a changeup from Osvaldo Bido and depositing it into the bullpen in right-center.
For his next trick, the righty Domínguez — a statistically much worse hitter — crushed a hanging curve from Hogan Harris into center to pad the Yankees’ lead in the seventh.
In a five-run, 10-batter eighth inning, Domínguez put the finishing touches on the greatest game of the 22-year-old’s life.
With Goldschmidt on first, Ben Rice on second and Aaron Judge on third, the lefty Dominguez got a 2-1, hard sinker from righty Elvis Alvarado and reversed the heater for a 387-foot shot to right-center. Three home runs on three very different pitches from both sides of the plate.
There was legitimate wonder whether Domínguez — who is part of a crowded outfield configuration in which one player who deserves time must sit daily — would even play.
On a night Cody Bellinger became the odd man out, Domínguez reminded that he, too, is hard to keep out of the lineup.
The Yankees scored 10 runs and probably should have plated more, going 3-for-14 with runners in scoring position.
The A’s, meanwhile, could not generate a clutch hit against Warren.
The no-longer-Oakland club did not reach base until the fourth inning, which was one of the few times Warren reached danger. He walked Tyler Soderstrom and allowed a one-out single to Brent Rooker.
With two on, Warren used a good sinker to catch Shea Langeliers looking before turning to a fading changeup to induce a chased strike three to JJ Bleday.
The A’s reached scoring position again in the sixth, when Nick Kurtz led off with a double.
But Warren ensured Kurtz was stranded right there, getting a groundout from Jacob Wilson, a flyout from Soderstrom and Rooker first chasing a sweeper and then watching Warren land a sweeper at the corner of the zone.
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