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Associated Press | Ronald Blum: José Caballero’s at-bat routine has been a source of conversation between the Yankees and Major League Baseball. Apparently, the league has joined other teams in growing weary of his refusal to acknowledge the pitcher until there are eight seconds remaining on the pitch clock. This has led to a series of incidents, including a bench-clearing one on Monday night. That incident sparked the league to interpret the rule differently for Caballero and earned him a violation during the first game of Wednesday’s doubleheader. The frustrating part for the Yankees was learning that the league instructed the umpires to not communicate the change in rule interpretation with him and to give him a violation. Caballero now, probably rightfully, feels he’s being “picked on.”
MLB.com | Matthew Ritchie: One would think that the pitcher who is supposed to start a game would be one of the first to be told that he’d be starting a particular game, but that wasn’t the case when Max Fried made his return from the IL for Wednesday’s night game. In fact, he was one of the last people to find out, but it was after the organization scrambled to make a rotational plan after weather did not allow the team to play on Tuesday. Fortunately, Fried was 100 percent on board with the plan (duh) and after receiving medical clearance he came back and showed exactly why the Yankees missed him, pitching five scoreless innings and striking out seven along the way.
MLB.com | Jim Callis, Jonathan Mayo, Rob Terranova: Trade Deadline season is upon us and the prospect experts at MLB.com go around the league to take a look at 10 teams that could be out shopping this season. The Yankees, who have needs, also happen to have the prospect capital to deal from. While the system is not nearly as highly ranked as the Dodgers or other teams, it’s still a solid enough system where almost no one should be considered “untouchable.” Chances are lower for someone like George Lombard Jr. or Carlos Lagrange to move, but for the right price it might be a consideration.
The Hollywood Reporter | Ryan Gajewski: While the exact details of the story have yet to be revealed, Glen Powell has been cast as the lead in a new movie about Lou Gehrig from Universal Pictures. Attached to direct is Richard Linklater, who worked with Powell on another baseball-adjacent movie, “Everybody Wants Some!!” while Simon Rich pens the script and Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels (no stranger to Yankees games) produces.
So far this movie is in the early stages, presumably, it would be a new attempt to tell Gehrig’s story and his battle with ALS — or at least a specific time in his life since the overall story was of course covered over 80 years ago with Gary Cooper in “Pride of the Yankees.” A report from Deadline indicted that Gehrig’s immediate replacement at first base, Babe Dahlgren, was involved in some way, so perhaps it’s a closer look at 1939 and Gehrig’s journey from realizing that he could simply no longer start for the Yankees to the tests at the Mayo Clinic that revealed the seriousness of his condition.
