Open Thread: February 22nd Camp Notes

Earlier today Brian Cashman confirmed to Bryan Hoch the Yankees have indeed signed first baseman Chris Parmelee to a minor league contract. He’ll be in camp as a non-roster player, so the Yankees are up to 69 players in big league Spring Training. Nice. Cashman stated the obvious: Parmelee is replacing the injured Greg Bird as the team’s Triple-A first baseman. Here are today’s photos and here are today’s notes:

• Chad Jennings has the day’s workout groups. Masahiro Tanaka, Ivan Nova, and Michael Pineda were among those to throw bullpens while Luis Severino, Nathan Eovaldi, James Kaprielian, and others faced hitters in live batting practice. Tanaka felt fine. “He’s where we want him to be. So far, there have been no hitches or anything,” said pitching coach Larry Rothschild. [Hoch]
• Carlos Beltran specifically requested to be locker neighbors with Aaron Judge so he can mentor him. “I guess Carlos is feeling this is the heir apparent to right field and whatever Carlos has to offer, he wants to give it to Aaron,” said equipment manager Rob Cucuzza. Pretty cool. Judge said his goal this season is to improve his selectivity at the plate. [Brendan Kuty, Meredith Marakovits]
• Aroldis Chapman was not in camp today for personal reasons. He’ll be back tomorrow. It was an excused absence — the Yankees knew about it a week ago — and it has nothing to do with any potential discipline stemming from his domestic dispute incident. Just a personal day. That’s all. [George King]
• As part of their annual media training mini-camp, the Yankees showed players video clips of Cam Newton, Russell Wilson, John Wall, Lawrence Taylor, Rob Gronkowski, Billy Wagner, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, and Alex Rodriguez. Basically a “do this, don’t do that” kind of thing. [Andrew Marchand, Ryan Hatch]
• And finally, Slade Heathcott nearly ran into his first outfield wall of the spring today. The games haven’t even started yet! Still plenty of time for wall-crashing, Slade. [Marchand]

This is the nightly open thread. The Knicks are playing and there’s some college basketball on the schedule too. That’s about it. Discuss those games or any of the Spring Training happenings right here.