Around the Empire: Yankees news - 8/17/22

NY Post | Greg Joyce: Aaron Hicks’ season has been a rollercoaster worthy of 2021’s envy, featuring a few decent months interrupted by a couple of absolutely dreadful ones. His blunder in center field on Monday seemed to embody all of his current struggles in physical form, and he was on the bench Tuesday with the team looking for answers on what to do with him. One answer seemingly has floated to the surface, with reports that Estevan Florial will be called up today from Triple-A. Florial’s had a very solid season in Scranton but never gotten an extended look in the majors — now with Hicks’ abysmal performance and Harrison Bader’s rehab still ongoing it looks like he’ll finally get a chance to prove he can step up.

Florial’s name is one of several that are getting floated around at the moment. The Athletic’s Lindsay Adler noted that the Yankees expect to make some roster moves prior to today’s game, and Clay Holmes also let reporters know that his back locked up on him recently which means he could be going onto the injured list. Then, late last night a report came through from El Extrabase’s Daniel Álvarez-Montes that the Yankees are going to call up Oswaldo Cabrera from Triple-A. It’s unclear at the moment how all of this will line up, so be on the lookout throughout the day to see what unfolds.

MLB.com | Bryan Hoch: Now that the trade deadline has come and gone, MLB Pipeline is getting around to updating all of the league’s top-30 prospect lists following a major re-shuffling of prospects (and improvements throughout the season). There’s no shock that the usual faces lead the team’s top three, with Anthony Volpe being listed as one of the top five prospects in all of baseball, but there are some notable changes. This year’s first-round pick Spencer Jones slots in as the team’s seventh-best prospect, and Clayton Beeter is now the ninth-best after being traded over from the Dodgers. Will Warren has also risen from an unranked position to the eighth place on the organization list, and Austin Wells joins Volpe, Oswald Peraza, and Jasson Domínguez on the top-100 MLB prospects list coming in at 87th overall.

FanGraphs | David Laurila: Jameson Taillon took some time to talk during the Boston series about his development as a pitcher throughout his career, including how his pitch selection has adapted to trends throughout the league and the mechanical changes he’s needed to make due to his injury history. It’s been a long journey for Taillon and he’s gotten access to a lot of great information between joining the Yankees and being teammates with Gerrit Cole both in New York and Pittsburgh, but in some aspects he’s still the guy that came up all those years ago.