Around the Empire: Yankees news - 5/23/23

NY Post | Mike Vaccaro: Stop me if you’ve heard this, but Aaron Judge is really good at playing baseball. The big bopper of the Yankee lineup has been on a tear since returning from the IL, and consequently the team has picked up some big wins over that stretch. His teammates continue to be wowed by Judge’s Herculean efforts at the plate, and several said that he looks just as good now as he did throughout his MVP campaign last season. Matching 62 home runs may be a feat even those with the most mythical of praise for Judge don’t expect to actually happen, but perhaps he’ll have a run at it anyway.

FanGraphs | Davy Andrews: Domingo Germán became the second pitcher this season to be ejected and subsequently suspended for having too much of a sticky substance on his person during a game, and there’s a lot of unknown criteria at play here. For all the faults we give umpires in the game today they’ve truly been delivered a difficult task in policing all of this, because what defines something as sticky rather than tacky, and how much of something is allowed, and how lenient they can be with giving players second chances to wipe it off, etc., is a whole big mess of a gray area.

NY Post | Greg Joyce: To make matters worse, the Yankees almost had a second ejection within a week when Clarke Schmidt was stopped by the umps. He was ultimately told to just wash off the excess rosin that he had on him and stayed in the game, but had he been tossed the team would be facing a situation where they would have two voided roster spots for an entire week. Naturally, the team is cracking down on their staff a bit and attempting to keep each other accountable to not fall into that pitfall again.

Sports Illustrated | Pat Ragazzo: The rotation hasn’t played out quite how the team envisioned at the start of the year, with newly-signed star pitcher Carlos Rodón still out and Luis Severino just returning this past weekend. Rodón’s timeline remains unknown, but in the meantime they could look to bolster their staff should they feel the need. The White Sox have been in a bit of a freefall this season after middling results last year, and their record combined with the overall culture rot that the franchise has dealt with could lead to them being sellers at the deadline. If that happens, Lucas Giolito’s name has popped up among rumors as a solid rental option being on the last year of his deal, and the Yanks could make a fine destination for him.

NY Post | Ryan Glasspiegel: By now, you may have heard about the absurd span of media that you’ll need to catch the Yankees’ games in their upcoming stretch. Sunday’s game was exclusive to Peacock, Wednesday will be on Amazon Prime Video, Friday goes to Apple TV+, with the remaining two games being on YES Network. WFAN mainstay Boomer Esiason had some thoughts on this lineup, comparing it to the array of networks that the NFL makes fans subscribe to in order to catch all of the content, and labeled it a cash grab. It’s certainly hard to argue with that when exclusive deals are in play, but hopefully this week won’t be too disrupting to all of your viewing experiences.