Jasson Dominiquez - the sleek, Olympian, 18-year-old centerfielder who was supposed to lead us from this Stygian darkness - may be eating too many French fries. This weekend, FanGraphs - one of the more credible sites for prospect analysis, support them here - dropped him from 1st (last year) to 4th among Yankee prospects, with this explanatory nugget:
... [H]e’s put on somewhere in the neighborhood of 30-plus pounds in the last 24 months, not all of which is muscle...
Yikes. They could say the same for me. Wasn't an addiction to the ice cream sandwich the long ago kryptonite of Jesus (H.) Montero, the Dominiquez of another era? When you sign a 16-year-old, it's like bringing home a puppy from the pound: You don't quite know how big it'll grow.
Lately, Dominiquez has generated a lot of ether, on the heels of:
1. A relatively disappointing debut season in low-single A.
2. A pile of kind words about him by the groundbreaking minor league manager, Rachel B.
3. The signing of a replacement future team hype-generator, Broderick Arias, a 17-year-old SS with similar post-puberty press clippings.
I don't mean to belittle Dominiquez. He is what he is. It's worth noting that the Yankees constantly praise his character and work ethic and - even if right now he is snarfing down Happy Meals like Lucille Ball devouring chocolates on a demented assembly line - we must believe that he'll push harder on the Peloton later. We should worry less about his weight than his swing-and-miss ratio.
Insert sigh here.
This is what happens when MLB shuts down, leaving fan sites to scavenge for tidbits of detritus.
Oh, well, after 19 weeks, the NFL is finally down to eight teams, none of which are owned by Jerry Jones. And you know what? Watching those final seconds tick down last night, I almost felt sorry for the bum. It was the sports equivalent of waterboarding. Bravo, juju gods!