{"id":72092,"date":"2025-06-01T22:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T22:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/72092\/"},"modified":"2025-06-01T22:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T22:11:10","slug":"dominic-smith-opts-out-of-minor-league-deal-with-yankees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/72092\/","title":{"rendered":"Dominic Smith Opts Out Of Minor League Deal With Yankees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dominic Smith<\/a> has become a free agent after triggering the opt-out clause in his minor league deal with the Yankees, ESPN\u2019s Jeff Passan<\/a> reports.\u00a0 Smith wasn\u2019t an Article XX(b) free agent<\/a> with a built-in June 1 opt-out date in any minor league contract, but his deal still apparently contained some opt-out flexibility if he hadn\u2019t been called up to New York\u2019s active roster.<\/p>\n

This is the second time in three months that Smith has opted out of a minors deal with the Yankees, as he also opted out of his initial contract near the end of Spring Training but re-signed with the club just after Opening Day.\u00a0 Smith has since been playing at Triple-A Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre, hitting .255\/.333\/.448 with eight home runs over 189 plate appearances.\u00a0 Smith has primarily been a left fielder, with a good chunk of playing time at first base and DH and a handful of games in right field.<\/p>\n

Despite his decent numbers and his defensive flexibility, it isn\u2019t hard to understand why the Yankees haven\u2019t felt the need to bring Smith to the majors.\u00a0 Even with Giancarlo Stanton<\/a> missing the entire season to date, Ben Rice<\/a> capably stepped into the regular DH role, and Paul Goldschmidt<\/a> has been excellent at first base.\u00a0 The outfield picture is also crowded between Aaron Judge<\/a>, Cody Bellinger<\/a>, Jasson Dominguez<\/a>, and Trent Grisham<\/a> surging into more playing time than expected due to some unexpectedly big production at the plate.\u00a0 With Stanton slowly working his way back to good health, the situation will only get more crowded in the Bronx barring future injuries, so another new contract might not be in the cards for Smith if he wants a clearer path to Major League playing time.<\/p>\n

A former top prospect and near-breakout star during his time with the Mets from 2017-22, Smith\u2019s production has tailed off and he has become something of a journeyman since leaving Queens.\u00a0 Smith has been a part of six different organizations since January 2023, and has hit .247\/.321\/.370 over 893 PA with the Nationals, Red Sox, and Reds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dominic Smith has become a free agent after triggering the opt-out clause in his minor league deal with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,18701,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-72092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-dominic-smith","10":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114610404434592027","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}