ESPN | Jeff Passan: Perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that MLB’s Saturday offer to the MLBPA was even worse than it initially seemed. The league apparently asked for flexibility to cut the number of minor league jobs (the Domestic Reserve List) from 180 to as few as 150 as soon as next year. It’s pretty brazen given that it really doesn’t save teams all that much money and they already culled the minor leagues of 42 teams after 2020. Anyway, the MLBPA is planning on rejecting that offer anyway, as they’ll reportedly to do with any that will cut minor league jobs. And good riddance to that offer.
NJ.com | Randy Miller, Brendan Kuty, and Bob Klapisch: It’s another edition of the NJ.com Yankees tribunal, as the three aforementioned reporters discuss skipper Aaron Boone. The pressure is on more than ever after facing quite a bit of criticism for the underachieving 2020-21 teams, and for getting a new three-year contract anyway. The consensus seems to be that while Boone is unlikely to change his boring “take it one day at a time” mentality, there has to at least be an acknowledgment that some losses do weigh on you more than others and while Boone need to throw chairs or anything, acting like everything’s always perfectly fine isn’t going to please anyone.
The Athletic | MLB Staff: This is a subscriber-only piece but a breath of fresh during a time in which MLB players would be reporting if they weren’t locked out by the owners. Multiple beat writers weighed in to share some their favorite spring training stories, and mixed in are some great Yankees-related tidbits about Babe Ruth, Don Mattingly, Rickey Henderson, Deion Sanders, and — yes, really — LaTroy Hawkins. The veteran reliever’s complete dismissal of the relevance of his 2008 exhibition performance has to be admired. (The short version is that he knew it meant basically nothing that his ERA was 0.00, but please read his frank account if you can.)