New York Yankees pitchers and
catchers and Carlos Beltran because of his injury took the field for the first
time as a team on Friday morning. It was
a welcome sight for many in the northeast as the winter has everyone looking
forward to spring. There wasn't too much
going on as is standard early in the spring.
There were some easy bullpens, some PFP which is pitchers fielding
practice if you didn't know and some jogging and stretching. The catchers also took some batting
practice.
A big topic on the first day was CC
Sabathia and gaining his weight back. He
lost a lot of weight over the last two seasons and everyone was asking for him
to get heavy again because they felt it affected him. It turns out they may have been right as
Sabathia talked about not having the right balance, we will see though as the
games start if he is just done or if he has anything left. I will say that the extra weight can't be
good for his degenerative knee.
Joe Girardi acknowledged on
Saturday that the Yankees will "do things more in this spring
training" to teach hitters to beat the defensive shift. It doesn't look like the Yankees are trying
to force anything on the hitters but they are talking about it and preaching it
which I think is a good thing. The game
has changed and offense is down, in my opinion the hitters need to adjust and
take what is given to them. If they hit
enough balls the other way and beat the shift, the shift will stop
eventually.
McCann was one of the guys affected
by the shift the most. He has been
working on beating it all winter but said that wasn't the biggest reason for
his numbers being down. He said that his
bat path last year was out of whack. He
said he had to go back during the off-season and study what he was doing
wrong. He said he was able to pinpoint
what the problem was and he feels good coming into camp. McCann caught only one bullpen on the first
day but it was from a new guy. The new
guy is not new to McCann though as he and David Carpenter worked together in
Atlanta. He is high on him saying he
setup for Kimbrel in Atlanta and the Yankees are expecting big things this year
from him.
McCann said he was sent about 10-15
video clips of every new pitcher this year and they must of been pretty long
clips. He said he feels like he saw
pretty much every outing from last year of all of those pitchers.
Carlos Beltran went through
outfield drills with Rob Thomson and took batting practice with McCann and also
John Ryan Murphy and Austin Romine.
There were three pitchers who attracted the most attention from the
media on day one. They were Sabathia
because of being injured last year, Jacob Lindgren who was last year's top pick
and is quickly rising through the ranks.
They feel he could be on the big league club this season. The last guy is Luis Severino who is
considered the Yankees top prospect. Joe
Girardi said "It's a live arm", It's a player who is bigger in
stature than I thought when I heard some of the comparisons. He's bigger than I thought. A lot of times you worry about the rigors of
players that are extremely thin, but he's a strong young kid, I believe, with a
lot of talent."
The Yankees hired former Angels
outfielder Reggie Willits to be their minor league outfield and baserunning coordinator. He'll be one of several minor league coaches
working with the players in big league camp this year.
The former Yankees who are listed
as special guest instructors this spring are: Eric Chavez, Billy Connors, Goose
Gossage, Ron Guidry, Reggie Jackson, Hideki Matsui, Lee Mazzilli, Stump Merrill
and Andy Pettitte.
Joe Girardi said this after day
one, “There’s a collection of good young
arms here. Obviously there’s guys that you’ve seen, but you look at the younger
players that we had a chance to look at today. Those are some pretty good arms.
And it’s not just from one side. It’s not just right-handed or left-handed,
it’s both. And that’s exciting to us.”
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