BALTIMORE — The Yankees called up an interesting infield prospect Friday, but he may not be up long enough to get a real look at his potential.
Jorbit Vivas joined the team at Camden Yards after being promoted from Triple-A to take the roster spot of a sick J.D. Davis, and could be in line to make his major league debut against the Orioles this weekend.
But that’s as far as manager Aaron Boone would go when asked about the role he envisioned the 23-year-old second baseman/third baseman having as the Yankees played their last series before the All-Star break.
“There could be a start for him this weekend, but no guarantees,” Boone said Friday. “Just going to let the weekend play [out]. But he’s got some pop in the bat, can move well, he’s a good athlete. There were probably a few guys in consideration and he’s the guy that’s definitely earned the right to be here.”
The left-handed hitting Vivas was batting .258 with a .828 OPS across 37 games at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, though he has been particularly hot of late, hitting .333 with a 1.113 OPS and five home runs over his last 19 games.
He is a natural second baseman but had recently been playing more third base, where he is still a work in progress, though Boone said he would be comfortable playing him there in a game, if needed.
With Gleyber Torres and DJ LeMahieu struggling offensively this season, the Yankees could have opted to use Vivas in a platoon with both players to see what they had in the young Venezuelan.
But Boone did not make it sound as if that would be the case, and Davis will be eligible to come off the injured list next Friday when the second half begins.
Still, Vivas — who was acquired from the Dodgers with since-DFA’d reliever Victor Gonzalez for prospect Trey Sweeney in December — was thrilled to be at Camden Yards awaiting his potential debut, especially given what he’s been through since the last time he was around the big league club.
On the final day of spring training, Vivas was working out in the gym before a game and using a band that snapped and hit him near the eye, leaving him with a fractured left orbital fracture.
“Very scary injury, so close to your eye,” Vivas said through an interpreter. “When you take everything into consideration, it could have been worse. But you go through a moment like that, very tough, but I just wanted to keep working and find myself back on the field.”
Vivas came back in late April for two games, only to land back on the IL with complications from the injury, but then returned in full by late May. The more at-bats he has gotten under his belt, the better he has hit.
“When you experience an injury like that … at least it’s in the back of your mind that you might not be able to see it as well as you used to,” SWB hitting coach Trevor Amicone said Friday. “That’s a scary thing and he had to deal with that and spend however many weeks it was recovering from that with that in the back of his mind. … I think there’s a little bit of that with those first few weeks here where he was settling in from that, but also to a new organization, pretty much a new level. Now he’s doing the things we expected him to do.”
The 5-foot-9 Vivas is known for his bat-to-ball skills, but he also packs some sneaky power that the organization believes can play up at Yankee Stadium whenever he gets a chance to play there.
“In the last couple weeks, we’ve seen the hitter we thought we were acquiring back when we made the trade,” minor league hitting coordinator Joe Migliaccio said Friday. “He almost gives this perception of over-swinging, but it’s a controlled violence that he takes.”