Ponderings on an off day: Voit, Judge and baseball's hottest bat

Yesterday, nothing almost happened, which - under the laws of quantum baseball physics - is patently impossible. 

Within the Yankiverse, something is always happening, even when nothing does.

From the mother ship down to the dirt leagues, no Yankee team took the field yesterday. No games. The new normal? Just another manic Monday. 

So, what almost happened in this uneventful, theoretical void?

1. The Death Barge is now second in the AL East, one flimsy percentage point above Tampa and a half-game up on the Toronto Blue Jays of Buffalo. Boston remains in first, though they lost to the still-distressed Orioles last night. At this point, scoreboard-watching is a joke, but here goes, anyway: 

If the season ended now, the Yankees would be the second AL Wild Card, which is basically what we figured in February. So, after all the blips and frustrations, we're right where we expected to be. Weird.

2. Baseball's hottest hitter will greet us in Tampa. Nope,s not Giancarlo. He is a 22-year-old, LH-hitting 2B named Trevor Hauser, who plays for our low single A franchise. Over the first five games, his numbers are ridiculous, cartoonish, beyond Ruthian - more like Paul Bunyanian: Six HRs, a .556 batting average, and an OPS of - gulp - 2.265. Of course, this is a blip - the baseball equivalent of a momentary radio pulse from deep space. We'll never know the true origin, but it probably means that Hauser, a third round pick last summer out of the U of Arizona, is merely too advanced for his league. Promote him, and that average will plummet like shoe polish down Rudy Giuliani's jowls. 

3. There is no stat line for the Yankees' top prospect, the ballyhooed Jasson Dominiquez, who is clapping erasers in after-school detention. He'll start next month in the rookie leagues. But for a moment, let's live like a Calgon Bath Oil Beads commercial: Close your eyes and imagine the Yankiverse today if Hauser's numbers were those of Dominquez, age 18. We'd be screaming from the rafters. That's due to the Ben-&-J-Lo-level hype piled onto Dominiquez, which is like giving a kid a loaded gun. Something tells me that, no matter what he does, Dominiquez will be a disappointment. You cannot compare a 16 year old to Mike Trout and Mickey Mantle without dooming him. The Yankees want their money's worth from this kid, and that means somehow monetizing the hype.

4. After missing six weeks, Luke Voit arrives tonight. Welcome back, Kotter. My guess: He'll bat fifth, after LeMahieu, Stanton, Hicks and Judge (if he plays on the hard Tampa turf). The Yankees need Luke's bat and improved defense. But the lineup tilts further to the right in a way that is clearly not sustainable over 162 games. We are a big, fat, slow-moving tanker truck for any team with a fiery RH bullpen, and the problem always shows up against Tampa.

5. As Aaron Judge struggles, we must face the growing fear is that this is not a slump but the result of unspecified injuries. If so, he could be in for a long season.  Coupled with the miserable starts of  Clint Frazier (hitting .143) and Brett Gardner (.200), the once-vaunted OF has become a sinkhole. They won't bench Aaron Hicks - that would be cancel culture, right? - but his numbers from the left side are so bad they deserve an Arizona recount by Cyber Ninjas. 

5. Down in the farm, an unlikely person of interest has emerged: Estavan Florial, remember him? He has four HRs and a .313 average at Double A. It's probably just a glitch in the matrix, but Florial bats LH and has track star speed. His fast start begs a question:

How much growing up did some of our formerly great prospects do last year, when their once-glorious futures suddenly turned to dust? Heading into 2020, Florial seemed like the classic undisciplined talent - as evidenced by his strike outs. Has he adjusted? Hard to say. He has 6 strikeouts in 22 ABs, so he'd fit in on the Yankees. If he keeps hitting, the Yankees will elevate him to Scranton. By July-August, who knows? 

A lot will almost happen, as it always almost does.