The Wheel Is Starting To Churn

Like clockwork, following the Super Bowl, you will start to see more and more baseball stories in your paper and on the internet. Camps open up soon, Feb. 14 for the Yankees, and several players are already working out at the minor league camp, and today Yahoo Sports had a Yankees team report, with some news and notes.

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But first, let me take this quick trip to upstate New York, where freakin UConn beat Syracuse by only two points. That hurts! They are down, having only seven players, but they are hanging around in games. More on that later as I am getting depressed, back to baseball.

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Here are some of the notes from the Yahoo report

**Tino Martinez will be a special instructor at spring training
**Brian Bruney avoided arbitration, by agreeing to a one-year $725,000 contract. Chien-Ming Wang is the last player in arbitration for the Yankees
**Morgan Ensberg signed a one-year minor league deal, and will compete for the first base job in spring training.
**Bobby Abreu and Johnny Damon were said to be out of shape at spring training last year, which contribited to the slow starts by both ... According to Cashman Abreu, who had a strained oblique muscle, worked out with a trainer in the offseason.
**In his last 10 seasons, Jeter has 1,971 hits, which is the tops in the majors in that span.
**CMW has won 19 games in each of the last two seasons, and has MLB's best winning percentage (.745) in that span among pitchers with at least 30 games. Wang also leads the majors in total victories (38) in the last two years.
**Matsui is expected to start spring training on time, after undergoing surgery to clean out his right knee. He looks to see more time at DH this season, than left field. Damon looks to be in left, while Melky with patrol center, and Abreu in right.
**The Yankees used 28 pitchers in 2007, tying a franchise record in 2005.

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Meanwhile, Peter Abraham of the LoHud Yankees Blog, is going to check out the new digs tomorrow ... David Cone will call games for YES this season ... Also Phil Hughes played golf today, and took on another member to their foursome, and will go to his first NASCAR event this weekend ... Pete Abe had this yesterday, and it is an interesting read by SI's Tom Verducci, on protecting pitchers with innings limits ... Verducci equates young pitchers building arm strength, like training for a marathon, take a look ... David Cone is also taking some blame for the lack of drug testing in baseball, Ronald Blum of the AP reports ... Cano is on the verge of $30 million for the next four years.