Around the Empire: Yankees news - 3/5/22

CBS Sports | Mike Axisa: The league has identified the international scene as one of the areas it needs reform in. Currently, there’s a lot of abuse by teams in how they pursue talent on the international market, including teams entering verbal agreements with players as young as 13-years-old when the official age to sign is 16, and the league believes that a draft set-up will enable them to cut down on such cases.

However, the league is capable of and has brought the hammer down on individual cases of abuse in the international scene before — when teams were overpaying for talent beyond what they were supposed to spend. They’ve largely ignored the league-wide symptoms of the current system, and likely favor a draft because its a cost-saving measure that eliminates the leverage that young players in Latin America have when becoming a pro.

ESPN: The lockout has a far-reaching effect beyond just the owners and players, and one of the demographics being hit are the people who make baseball stadiums operate. Those people are currently facing the prospect of not getting paid anytime soon, and so the players’ union set up a fund to support them. The owners also say they are going to do the same, which is nice since, y’know, they’re the ones that should be doing that in the first place.

NJ.com | Mike Rosenstein: Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge are approaching some nice round milestones in their career home run totals, but they were going to have to get lucky to reach them in a single season normally. Now, with the prospect of many games being removed from the schedule entirely, it would be a gigantic task for either to reach those numbers in a singular season.

NJ.com | Mike Rosenstein: Minor league baseball will be played on time regardless of how the lockout plays out — but there’s a twist. Players on the 40-man rosters of MLB teams can’t participate, which creates a worrying roster scenario for plenty of Triple-A organizations. For the Yankees specifically, it will hamper the development of a lot of their pitching prospects: Luis Gil, Clarke Schmidt, Deivi Garcia, and Luis Medina among others will all be sidelined for the moment.