Around the Empire: Yankees news - 1/11/23

NJ.com | Mike Rosenstein: Everybody loves rookies, especially when they perform at a high level from the moment they step on a major league diamond. Every Rookie of the Year candidate, however, has their own journey. Sometimes, they’re highly-touted prospects that were once early round draft picks and high-profile international free agents whose arrival in the big leagues has been carefully documented and long awaited. Other times, they come out of nowhere and burst onto the scene, inserted into a key role due to injuries or ineffectiveness. Anthony Volpe, the No. 5 ranked prospect in baseball and the Yankees’ consensus top prospect, certainly fits into the former category, as he’s an all-too-early candidate for the AL Rookie of the Year award.

Yahoo! Sports | Zach Crizer: Do you remember your high school yearbooks? Inevitably, there was a page in them filled with “superlatives,” identifying which students were most likely to run for president, become a teacher, start a popular YouTube channel, or abandon their homes to lead a simple life in a rural monastery. Well, now that the Carlos Correa saga is at an end (I think? I hope?) and we have about six weeks left to fill before pitchers and catchers report, it’s as good a time as any to dust off ol’ reliable and assign superlatives to major league teams this winter. Not surprisingly, the Yankees were at the center of it all: not only were they named “Most Popular” due to re-signing Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo and reeling in Carlos Rodón, they also contributed to the San Francisco Giants being named “Most likely to fall down the stairs” due to the Arson Judge and Carlos Correa sagas.

NESN | Adam London: In the slowest days of the winter, sometimes we must turn to other markets for slivers of Yankees news. In this case, by turning our gaze northward to Boston, we can learn just how close Tommy Kahnle, the popular reliever whose return to New York served as the appetizer for Judge’s return in the palettes of the fans, came to betraying the organization that drafted him by signing with the Boston Red Sox. At the end of the day, Kahnle opted to go with “familiarity” in the Bronx rather than a larger contract in Beantown, both in terms of location (this will be his third stint in the organization) and role (Boston is in the middle of remaking its ‘pen).