The Daily Yankeeland

Ah, can you smell it? Can you breathe it in? Can you feel it? The first day of spring training. Rejuvenation is in the air. Can you feel the sunshine warming your skin? (OK, so it's 29 degrees in NJ, but lets dream people).

What a perfect Valentine's Day gift- pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training. Well almost every pitcher and catcher. Andy Pettitte has received permission to report to camp on Monday due to some personal matters. Pettitte is also supposed to be behind in his prep work due to the Mitchell Report related nonsense and an injury his son received playing football during the Fall.

It's going to be a mixed kind of day for Chien-Ming Wang. The Wanger's got his arbitration hearing today. Win or lose, he's going to make a nice chunk of change, but he's also going to get beat up a bit by management. That is the downside of the arbitration process.

Wang will hear about inconsistency in the 2nd half of last season and his God-awful playoff performance. The Yankees have a submitted a bid of $4 million, while Wang countered with $4.6 million. It's really absurd that a compromise wasn't worked out. Wang also got shot down in an attempt to get a long term deal.