One week until pitchers and catchers

It feels like it never left.  Honestly this may have been the shortest stint of seasonal affective disorder I've ever had.  The day after the Super Bowl was one of the real low moments of my life.  A 24-hour anxiety attack.  But now it's Thursday, it's almost the weekend and we're just a week away until baseball players leave their homes to go somewhere else to workout before they play practice games for a month to get ready for real baseball games in April.  LETS GO.

The last couple of days have yielded a few interesting notes - the most important one was that Tanaka threw off a mound for the first time since having surgery to remove bone spurs from his elbow.  He felt fine and is on a regular schedule to begin the season so we can all kind of relax but not really relax.  I don't care if the spurs have been there since birth.  You can't just cut open Masahiro Tanaka's right elbow and expect me not to be worried about it.  I don't care if you were removing a wart.

Keith Law also released his list of the top farm systems in baseball and ranked the Yankees 13th, a seven spot jump from last year.  Law's list isn't gospel, but there's hardly anyone in the world who follows this stuff more carefully than he does.  Despite the Chapman trade and the removal of Bird and Severino from the prospect pool, the leap up the board was certainly merited.  The high-end guys - Aaron Judge, James Kaprielian and Jorge Mateo - all earned themselves an invite to spring training even if they're a ways away from donning pinstripes.  There are a number of guys who could probably step into big league roles right away if called upon (Slade Heathcott, Mason Williams).  James Pazos and Jacob Lindgren are going to challenge for a bullpen gig right out of camp.  The resurgent Gary Sanchez may be the frontrunner to backup Brian McCann.  Bryan Mitchell and Rob Refsnyder are also on the fringe of major league jobs.

This next month and a half is going to dictate a lot of what the 25-man roster looks like on April 4th against the Astros.  Two bench spots (catcher, infielder) and three bullpen openings are essentially up for grabs.  Mix that in with appearances from Judge, Mateo and Kaprielian and the Yankees have a lot of young guys to keep their eye on starting next Thursday.