Catching Up With Yankees News

The Pitchers for today were as follows: Melancon,Tomko,Hacker,Brackman,De La Rosa,Claggett,Jackson. The other group was: Hughes,Wang,Sabathia,Marte,Aceves,Ramirez CC was talking to some of the beat writers today and informed them that he is a Oakland Raiders fan. He played tight end in high school and was recruited by UCLA and Cal but was going to go to Hawaii because they were willing to let him play both baseball and football. "Then I got picked in the first round," he said. Mark Melancon was very impressive today according to Peter Abraham of the Journal News and http://yankees.lhblogs.com. He watched him pitch today to Derek Jeter,Robbie Cano, Austin Jackson and Austine Romine. He said his fastball was as advertised, he also threw five curveballs with 4 of them being strikes, its a big curve. He threw 30 pitches in all. The Yankees were very careful with him last year coming off of Tommy John surgery but he is now ready to be unleashed. I really think he has a good chance of making it out of spring training and if not he will be up by the end of the year, this kid has the tools and the makeup and may be the closer post MO.v Edwar Ramirez cut short his bullpen today due to a sore right shoulder. If this is seious at all which is too early to say then guys like Melancon and Robertson are going to have a really good chance at making it. The Grapefruit league begins on Wednesday for the Yankees and the pitchers for the first four games are set up as follows: Wednesday-Brett Tomko, Thursday-Phil Hughes,Friday-Ian Kennedy,Saturday-Joba Chamberlain. The main pitchers will be held back until late next week. Jorge Posada really liked what he saw from Melancon. He said his fastball had a late cut and that was what was leading to the swing and misses today. Posada also liked his curveball. He also said that Eric Hacker is a guy to keep an eye on, he throws 95 and its easy, very impressive. Derek Jeter has some hamstring soreness, it doesn't appear to be a big deal. I wouldn't worry about anything like this at this point, it really is no big deal, a lot of these muscles are being used now like they haven't been in a while.