This is usually Mike’s department, but I don’t see him online at the moment, so I’m going to wrap up this piece by the indispensable Chad Jennings. While his job is to cover the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Yankees, he does a stupendous job of talking to guys like Nardi Contreras and Mark Newman, providing updates from the entire Yankees farm system. While you can find the full list of updates at his site, here’s the abridged version.

Humberto Sanchez is on the road back, but he’s not at 45 pitches yet. Jennings explains that this is the number of pitches they want a starter to toss from a mound before getting him into a game. This suggests that at least for the time being, the Yankees will use him as a starter. We’ll see, though.

For those Chris Garcia nuts out there (I’m looking right at you, Jamal), he’s pitching today. I’m not sure where he’s pitching today, but it will be four innings or 55 pitches, whichever comes first. We’ll see if we can get the results if this start happens to be in extended spring training.

Nardi seems to be very happy about Zach McAllister, J.B. Cox, and Mark Melancon. And really, how couldn’t he be? These guys are pitching very, very well.

Finally, no one knows what’s up with Sean Henn. Could it be possible that no team claims him off waivers? It seems to me a team like the Giants could afford the roster spot. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Over the last 18 months or so, some of the Yanks very best pitching prospects went down with major arm injuries. It was frustrating and almost laughable at how many quality arms went down with Tommy John surgery, but at the same time it’s a testament to the kind of pitching depth the organization has when they can lose that many guys still have arms like Hughes, Joba, IPK, Tyler Clippard and Ross Ohlendorf make contributions at the Major League level.

A popular comment amongst…uh, commentors is that “Player X [who went down with a major injury in 2007] will be ready to help the bullpen by midseason,” and you know what? That statement is completely wrong. Pitchers have to relearn their mechanics and find their control after such a long layoff, and that process can be painstaking at times. Guys who rely on command and control need even more time to get things back to once they were.

Just like Brian Cashman, I can’t predict the future, so the info presented here is basically just my best educated guess, if that makes sense. We’re all hoping these guys get healthy and dominate in 2008, but in reality we should hope that they just finish the year strong. Fun starts after the jump.

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From BA:

Yankees outfielder Jose Tabata will miss the remainder of the season after surgery to remove the hamate bone in his right wrist.

The injury has bothered the 19-year-old outfielder since playing in the Venezuelan Winter League, and he’s seen five different hand specialists over the past year to get a proper diagnosis.

“It’s a six-week rehab and he’s going to be fine,” Yankees senior vice president of baseball operations Mark Newman said. “He tried to play through it and he shouldn’t. He’s had problems with it on an off for a while and it really bothered him on a swing. We got him in for an MRI that revealed the damage.”

Well at least he’s getting this fixed once for all. If the kid could hit .307-.371-.392 in the FSL as an 18-yr old with a bum hand, I can’t wait to see what he does fully healthy.

The same article has this on forgotten man Christian Garcia:

The Yankees got hit with more bad news recently when righthander Chris Garcia sustained a knee injury and needed surgery.

Garcia, a third-round pick out of a Miami high school in 2004, was rehabbing from Tommy John surgery at the time of the injury and isn’t expected to begin rehabbing again until November.

“He was doing some running as part of his rehab from (Tommy John),” Newman said. “As fate would have it, this happened. It’s like serving a concurrent sentence for a criminal. We expect him to be ready to go in the spring.”

The Garcia injury is no biggie, it won’t delay his return at all. That’s the good thing about TJ, if you hurt anything else while you’re rehabbing, you have plenty of time to let that heal as well.