Yankees set to approach their German breaking point at Domingo

TAMPA – Imagine you’re Aaron Boone, or Brian Cashman, or Hal Steinbrenner.

It’s Wednesday night and you get ready for the annual vacation which is the first pitchers and catchers training sessions the next morning. You have dozens of COVID-specific details to deal with, as well as the standard desire to kick off your desired championship race with the right first step.

Then you are alerted that Domingo German, already on thin ice, has set Instagram on fire again.

At what point do you decide that the right-handed advantage doesn’t deserve the stir it creates? The Yankees should approach that point. They must, for the sake of everyone else they employ.

After all, when your team’s player representative, Zack Britton, one of the most gracious humans to ever walk the earth, proclaims, “Sometimes you can’t control who your teammates are and that’s the situation. As he did on Thursday about his pitching colleague, that says a lot about the German’s status here.

On Thursday, after officially kicking off his fourth season on the job at the Yankees minor league complex, Boone admitted he had indeed spoken with the German, trying to come back from an 81-game suspension for violating protocols. domestic violence from Major League Baseball, about his latest mistake, an Instagram post Wednesday that proclaimed, in Spanish, “it’s all over.”

“When I first heard about it last night and saw it it was brought to my attention, I was a little surprised and immediately concerned,” Boone admitted. “But I feel like [it was] maybe a little out of context. A little over the top. And I am convinced that he is doing well and that he is doing well and that he is ready to compete.

“But it’s something we’ll continue to watch and the best we can try to make sure he’s in a good position. But I had the conversation of trying to be as smart and selective as possible about some of the things that we are saying publicly.

A perfectly rational place to start would be for the German to get out of the social media game. Said Boone: “I don’t feel able to tell someone how they’re going to express themselves or anything.” Strangely enough, I feel in such a position. Because even if this specific post was really out of context and / or exaggerated, German has long since lost the benefit of the doubt.

The German barely became the first baseball player to commit a terrible act of domestic violence, when he did so on September 16, 2019. However, in the five years that these protocols have been in the Major League Baseball, it’s hard to think of anyone. who has raised more red flags since he got caught. In February 2020, while his teammates were working at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the German, tasked with staying in his native Dominican Republic, was involved in a buggy accident, making headlines despite his absence.

And after the pandemic stopped, which ensured his penalty would keep him out of the game for over a year, German posted on Instagram last July that he had “quit baseball.” Like the words he spoke on Wednesday, those feelings were quickly gone, thanks to the delete feature.

In a vacuum, each of the 28-year-old’s most recent actions can be explained due to immaturity. Collectively, following his worst moment, they paint the portrait of a young man who does not have his act together.

Britton, who asked if the German owed anything to him and his Yankees teammates, replied: “I think it’s something he’s going to have to manage on his own and make better choices in the future.

The German, not yet eligible for arbitration, will earn less than $ 1 million this season. The Yankees can release it without breaking an economic sweat. When it comes to baseball, while we have seen the German field well at times, especially in 2019 before his suspension began, it’s not so amazing that the Yankees can’t win without him.

What about zero tolerance for the future? Another distraction or a statement of stupidity and the German becomes an ex-Yankee? When one of your most respected players apparently doesn’t want anything to do with him, it seems entirely reasonable, if not downright generous.