Yankees add 5 more to Non Roster Invite List for Spring Training

The New York Yankees added 5 more players to their list of non roster invitees to spring training. The players are infielders Brandon Laird and Jorge Vazquez along with right handed pitchers D.J. Mitchell, Dustin Moseley and Ryan Pope. The Yankees will now have 25 non roster players in camp and bring the total number up to 65. Laird is the younger brother of Tigers catcher Gerald Laird and led the Florida State Leauge in Rbi's last season with 75. He also batted 266 with 13 homeruns. Mitchell is only 22 years old and made his professional debut last season when he went 12-7 with a 2.63 era in 25 appearances in Class A Tampa and Charleston. He made 24 starts and had 124 strikeouts which was second among all yankees minor leaguers. He also was tied for second in wins and fourth in ERA. Moseley came from the Angels where he went 1-0 with a 4.30 era last season. He was on the disabled list in April with right forearm tightness and in August underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left hip. Pope was with Trenton all of last season and went 5-12 with a 4.78 era. He was selected in the third round of the 2007 draft by the Yankees. He is the only player to ever come out of Savannah College of Art and Design. Vazques is 27 years old and was a 10 year veteran of the Mexican League. He signed with the Yankees in December of 2008, he made his Double A Debut last season batting 329 with 13 homeruns and 56 rbi's in 57 games before missing the final 2 months with a left wrist sprain. This information was provided on Yankees.com. The Yankees are going to have a packed house once everyone reports to camp next week, it should be fun as they are coming off a World Championship. It will be interesting to see if any young guys make a name for themselves because with the Yankees the roster is pretty much set but you never know for future trades or at some point if they can help the club with injuries or ineffectiveness.

Joba in the headlines

I have to admit when I saw this in the Post this morning I was a little nervous. When you read the story though it is a lot of nothing. He was pulled over and charged with the DUI 6 months ago and then he was recently sentenced to probation and lost his license for 6 months. The papers obviously had nothing to write about with the Mets and Yankees both off yesterday so they had to come up with this. The smoking gun website had a video of Joba yesterday during his arrest and he said some things but what he said was that Yogi Berra is short and that NY drivers are rude, Wow this is so alarming, I didn't know any of these things. The papers of course made it out to be a big deal and it's not. The big deal is that he was driving drunk but that is over and done with, hopefully he is over that and it doesn't turn into a big problem. I know I did stupid things when I was young and I am not famous and don't have money. He got caught up in his fame and just had too much too fast and hopefully this was a hard lesson for him to learn but that he did learn it. Mike Ashmore the Trenton Thunder beat writer and has the Thunder Thoughts blog posted some stuff from Media Day down there yesterday. He has audio, video and quotes so check it out if you are a fan of the farm system and the Trenton Thunder.