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How does one report on a player that threw one inning of consequence for the big league roster?
2021 stats
1 IP, 0.00 WHIP, 33.3 K%, 0.0 BB%, 0.0 HR/9, 0.00 ERA (1.17 FIP), 0.0 fWAR
The good
He made it back to the major league mound. That’s about as good as it gets for Dominguez.
The bad
It’s hard to really say anything bad about Dominguez when it comes to his getting back to Philadelphia this season.
Was his control in the minors bad? Sure, 12 walks in 20 1⁄3 innings ain’t great shakes.
Was he giving up a lot of gopher balls? Well five allowed in those same 20 1⁄3 innings isn’t exactly confidence inducing.
Should we have a little bit of concern that his velocity wasn’t where it was? 97.3 in 2019, 95.1 in his lone outing isn’t great.
Should he have gotten the Tommy John surgery sooner? Maybe, but that’s a personal medical condition. Plus, during the Covid quarantine, elective surgeries were hard to get.
But folks - he hadn’t pitched in the major leagues in over two years. Give the guy a little bit of a break. Anyone thinking he’d come in and dominate again after being off that long needs to recalibrate their internal baseball watching clock.
The future
Dominguez is up for arbitration and shouldn’t see too much of a raise, so he’ll definitely be back next season. If you’re worried about how he wasn’t that good in his rehab, let’s look at some of his outings.
Here are some videos in chronological order this year.
Seranthony Dominguez 1IP 0H 0BB 2K. 080321 Lakewood gun continues to be 3-4 slow, per broadcast. pic.twitter.com/zhz8KsiLV0
— PHI Prospect BurnerAcct (@PBurneracct) August 4, 2021
1-2-3 for Seranthony Dominguez making his first rehab start for the Jersey Shore BlueClaws. #RingTheBell pic.twitter.com/gY1ORdV00i
— The Liberty Line (@LibertyLinePHL) August 4, 2021
TOP 5: The Ducks have some BIG LEAGUE POWER! The Ducks go back-to-back off the rehabbing big leaguer Seranthony Dominguez. @JoseFermin29 drives it out to left as it just gets over the wall!
— Akron RubberDucks (@AkronRubberDuck) August 13, 2021
AKRON 9 - READING 0 pic.twitter.com/Z3r9jlarEH
Seranthony Dominguez second outing in Reading:
— KRAM 207 (@Kram207) August 15, 2021
FB: 92 96 95 95 93 96 95(HR) 96 94 96 95 95
CH: 85 85 86 87 88 89 87 87
The three strikeout pitches tonight from Seranthony Dominguez were all pretty filthy, but I like the first one best, sinker at 96 running in on the hands pic.twitter.com/LP2WUKqZTg
— Mitch Rupert (@Mitch_Rupert) August 25, 2021
One of Seranthony Dominguez’s better rehab outings tonight, allows just one baserunner on an error in an inning of work and strikes out three … Threw 13 of 19 pitches for strikes and had three pretty good pitches for punchies pic.twitter.com/U27Opnl1aW
— Mitch Rupert (@Mitch_Rupert) September 3, 2021
You can see the stuff getting crisper and crisper as he moved through his rehab games. It was a matter of time before the stuff finally showed since it’s always been there, so perhaps it does take a month or more to get back to where you want to be after not pitching for almost two years.
Final grade: Incomplete
Dominguez figures to be a big piece of the team’s bullpen plans in 2022. But we can’t really use what he did in 2021 with the Phillies as any indication other than it’s good to see him back on the mound.