Around the Empire: Yankees news - 5/15/22

New York Daily News | Kristie Ackert: Friday night’s win against the Chicago White Sox was pretty except in one respect — the defensive play of shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa. His struggles on defense are continuing, and his current hitting slump means there’s nothing to distract from it. Boone insists that IFK’s issues aren’t snowballing, and suggested that the field at Guaranteed Rate Field was wet and that’s why he had problems on that particular day. Not sure about that, but the Yankees are evidently not giving up on him yet, and rightfully so. Gerrit Cole and Gleyber Torres were certainly purposeful in showing support to him on the field on Friday.

Sports Illustrated | Max Goodman: The Yankees are good right now and, crucially, fun to watch again. That’s in no small part due to the antics of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. Judge is battling for the MLB home run lead, while Stanton is continuing to show off his ridiculous power on swings that would look like pop flies from anyone else. Perhaps they’re showing off like they were in 2017, when Stanton was the National League MVP and Judge was arguably robbed of the counterpart award in the American League. It’s hard to make an exact comparison to 2017 considering factors like the late start to the season, but if these two keep bashing at this rate, it will be easier and easier to do.

Sports Illustrated | Pat Ragazzo: Clarke Schmidt was a victim of a roster crunch when he was sent down to the minor leagues on May 2, not any bad performance from him. He’s back in the big leagues now, and admits that he initially took his demotion poorly (hard to blame him). Now, he says he’s focused on being adaptable and appreciating being with the major league team even more in his long relief role. He also discusses the huge differences of pitching in Triple-A parks after having MLB experience.

New York Post | Dan Martin: The trade to acquire Josh Donaldson came with some questions, with a primary one being is anyone actually going to like this guy? So far, Donaldson has showed off some of the attitude that’s made him a frequent object of complaint from other teams, notably on Friday when the benches briefly cleared as a result of some apparently harsh words with Tim Anderson. His former manager in Toronto, John Gibbons, says Donaldson’s style reminds him of Paul O’Neill, who was considered the glue of the championship teams he played on. Some good hitting wins rings too, and Donaldson has been heating up, raising his OPS over 200 points over the last 17 games.