New York Yankees News: 18-year Veterans and 18-year-olds

After a little over a month of waiting, Mariano Rivera appears to finally be finally set for surgery on his torn ACL. The doctors were waiting for a blood clot in his right calf to clear before operating, and now that the problem is gone, he will have surgery next Tuesday. Here's to Mo coming in from the 'pen to save the win on Opening Day 2013.

The Yankees are confident that their two highest picks will not take long to sign, which is great to hear--it gets them started in the Rookie League as soon as possible. Both Ty Hensley and Austin Aune have already elected to join the Yankees rather than attend college. Hensley incidentally hopes that he can reach the big leagues by age 21. It's a bold goal, but I'm certainly not going to be the one who says he can't do it. In fact, here's my challenge: do it Hensley, you won't. If he even gets himself to the AAA Yankees by age 21, that will be a feat in it of itself. Once he's in AAA, all he can do is pitch well and hope he gets "the call."

Returning to the injured Yankee report, David Robertson says he'll be back in "eight or nine days." He'll return to the setup role when he does come off the DL, although manager Joe Girardi stated that Robertson and current closer Rafael Soriano are "interchangeable" in the role. Let's see if Girardi actually sticks to this claim and doesn't marry D-Rob to the eighth and Soriano to the ninth. Outfielder Brett Gardner is also progressing in rehab, and after sitting out a game yesterday with "normal soreness" in his elbow, he'll return to his "extended extended" Spring Training rehab assignment today. If all goes well, he'll be playing in the minors by the weekend and could perhaps join the Yankees next week when they play the Braves in Atlanta.

The Subway Series between the Yankees and Mets is coming up soon, beginning tomorrow at Yankee Stadium from June 8-10. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tickets aren't as expensive as they used to be. To say that the novelty of interleague play has gone stale is an understatement at this point. I think that if they want it to be a bigger ticket again, they need to skip playing the Mets for a year, or at least cut it to three games per year rather than six.

These videos are not Yankee-related, but I believe they're worth checking out from a pure baseball fan's perspective:

• Toronto's Brandon Morrow dominated the White Sox with a two-hit shutout. Nova came close to duplicating this feat last night, but Morrow succeeded against the ChiSox. The shutout was his third of the year, more than anyone in the majors. Only Johan Santana even has two shutouts. He's really having a great comeback year thus far, showing people why he was worth getting excited over when he struck out 17 Rays in August 2010.
• Watch Oakland's Yoenis Cespedes fly around the bases for a triple. According to his height and weight on Baseball-Reference, he's 5'10" and 210 pounds, but he sure looks a lot bigger than that, and it seems strange that he has so much speed.
• Johnny Damon ignored the rust of his old bones in left field and robbed Prince Fielder of a homer in Detroit. He's still not good at all on defense, but kudos will be given when kudos are deserved.
• Okay, okay. This video is Yankee related. Nova'd.