The Yankees had a rare off day on
Monday and they will be back in action tonight when they take on the Boston Red
Sox. It is a rare night game in spring
training. I would say that so far in
camp it has been pretty quiet and I think that is a good thing. There haven't been any major injuries, Alex
Rodriguez has continued to go about his business like he did so well last year
and nothing else has really popped up. I
guess the biggest story was the 30 game suspension of Aroldis Chapman and he
won't be appealing it.
Chapman is the Yankees closer but
will not be eligible to return until May 9th.
He has slowed down his spring training schedule and will stay behind in
Tampa to work in extended spring when the team heads north in a couple of
weeks. Andrew Miller will presumably be
the closer with Dellin Betances being the main setup guy until his return. It is interesting because there are at least
four other spots open in the bullpen. It
appears that Chasen Shreve will take one of them and they will have some kind
of long man. The interesting thing is
will it be Bryan Mitchell serving as the new Adam Warren or will they send him
to AAA to keep him as a starter and stretched out. If they do that will they have Ivan Nova in
the bullpen with CC Sabathia as the fifth starter. If Nova outperforms him will they keep Nova
as the fifth starter and put CC in the pen??
These are the biggest questions as the lineup is pretty much set.
The Yankees bench will carry a
backup catcher, right now Austin Romine seems to be winning that battle over
Gary Sanchez, Dustin Ackley as the backup first baseman, Aaron Hicks as the
fourth outfielder and it looks like Rob Refsnyder may make the team as the
backup second and third baseman.
Brett Gardner has not yet played in
a game as they have taken it very slowly with him coming off of a bone bruise
in his wrist suffered in last year one game playoff loss. He has said all along that he is fine and he
will finally get into a game on Wednesday.
Masahiro Tanaka has looked good so
far this spring and he appears to be lined up perfectly for Opening Day. I would expect that to be the case barring
any problems, I would think Joe Girardi might state that in the next week or
so.
The Yankees did cut 17 players and
send them to minor league camp in their first wave of cuts. There were some notable names such as Aaron
Judge, Jorge Mateo, James Kaprielian and Jacob Lindgren among others. I am not surprised by any of them other then
Lindgren, I thought he had a good shot at making the team and definitely didn't
think they would send him back so quick.
Michael Pineda and Luis Severino
have looked good this spring as well.
Severino struggled a little in his first start but has pitched a couple
of good games since then. The Yankees
rotation can be very good if healthy and I think the load off of them will help
also. The bullpen is so good that they
know if they give six good innings they will be in good shape.
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