Raul Dominguez is back with the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders this season.<\/p>\n
He was on the RailRiders staff for the 2021 and 2022 seasons before being named manager of the New York Yankees\u2019 Double-A affiliate, the Somerset Patriots, in 2023. In three seasons, he compiled a 232-180 record and took the Patriots to the Eastern League playoffs all three seasons.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Now, he returns to the RailRiders to serve as defensive coach on manager Shelley Duncan\u2019s staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter spending three years in Somerset and now coming back here again in Triple-A with a new staff, a lot of guys I\u2019m going to work with for the first time, I\u2019m excited,\u201d Dominguez said. \u201cI feel as a coach, you learn every year from different managers and coaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year in Somerset, I worked with those (players) a lot and now they\u2019re here and I have a relationship with them. Having those guys again and knowing them a little bit and what they need to work on, I\u2019m excited to be here with that group.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before coming back to Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre, Dominguez got to experience something special. He served as first-base coach for Panama at the World Baseball Classic. Playing in Pool A in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Panama went 1-3. It lost to Cuba, 3-1; Puerto Rico, 4-3; and Colombia, 4-3; and defeated Canada, 4-3.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
\u201cThose four games were so exciting, there was a lot of up and down emotion,\u201d Dominguez said. \u201cWe only won one game, but we lost two games by one and one by two. It was so loud and exciting. I remember I didn\u2019t feel any fatigue until after when I got back to Tampa. But during those four days, it was one of my best experiences in baseball, especially with that name on my chest \u2014 Panama. I thought it was going to be the same as the winter league or the Caribbean Series, but no. It was totally different. It was very competitive and very emotional. It was a really, really good experience for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brendan Beck echoed that sentiment. The right-hander, who is ranked No. 22 among Yankees prospects according to MLB Pipeline, pitched in the WBC for Great Britain \u2014 his mother is British. He got to be teammates with his older brother Tristan, who is in the San Francisco Giants organization.<\/p>\n
On March 9, Beck started for Great Britain against Brazil and threw four scoreless and hitless innings with two walks and four strikeouts in an 8-1 win.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was awesome. It was super special. Definitely not something I dreamed of growing up, even knowing there was a Great Britain baseball team,\u201d Beck said. \u201cWe figured it out and knew that opportunity was there. Just super-exciting leading up to the tournament and then putting the uniform on was really cool. Really the first time I got to represent my mom and her side of the family. My grandparents aren\u2019t with us anymore, but they would have thought it was really cool just to see Great Britain on the baseball field. Getting to do it with my brother, having my whole family in Houston and friends come in was super special. Something I\u2019ll definitely remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Right-hander Harrison Cohen, the Yankees\u2019 No. 28 prospect, was a member of Team Israel at the WBC. He appeared in one game and threw two scoreless and hitless innings with five strikeouts in a 6-2 victory over The Netherlands.<\/p>\n
Elmer Rodr\u00edguez, the Yankees\u2019 No. 3 prospect, pitched for Puerto Rico. The righty started against Cuba on March 9th and got the win, 4-1. He pitched three scoreless innings with one hit, three walks and three strikeouts.<\/p>\n
Reliever Yerry De Los Santos was on the Dominican Republic\u2019s Designated Pitcher Pool, which meant he could have been called up after the first round. However, he was not.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
While the World Baseball Classic has its critics, Beck thinks the tournament is great for the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt really shows how much of a global sport baseball is,\u201d Beck said. \u201cYou think of Major League Baseball, you think of the Japanese League, obviously Mexico and Korea have big leagues as well. But seeing the fans we had with Great Britain supporting us back home and seeing teams like the Czech Republic, some of the small island teams, people know baseball. Baseball is a global language, a global sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou saw how passionate the players were playing in it. Only one team every year can win the World Series, but you saw how important it was for guys playing a championship tournament in March. Guys were pushing themselves more than they ever really pushed themselves in March. I think that\u2019s cool. Guys were playing for something more than themselves. Doing whatever it takes for their team, their country, their fans, I think is really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raul Dominguez is back with the Scranton\/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders this season. He was on the RailRiders staff for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[71455,71453,70917,26435,11199,4559,1471,68101,71452,26184,178,180,179,71451,71454,51872,65923],"class_list":{"0":"post-157829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-baseball-america","9":"tag-brendan-beck","10":"tag-eastern-league","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-major-league-baseball","13":"tag-new-york-yankees","14":"tag-puerto-rico","15":"tag-railriders","16":"tag-raul-dominguez","17":"tag-san-francisco-giants","18":"tag-scranton","19":"tag-scranton-headlines","20":"tag-scranton-news","21":"tag-somerset-patriots","22":"tag-troy-taormina-imagn","23":"tag-world-baseball-classic","24":"tag-yerry-de-los-santos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}