Spring Training notebook: Pitchers and catchers report

TAMPA, Fla. -- Pitchers and catchers have finally reported to Tampa, thankfully, giving us some on-field news to talk about for the first time last September. Granite there wasn't a whole lot to talk about, baseball activities are still baseball activities, and that is worth sharing with you.

For those of you interested: Masahiro Tanaka was given Mariano Rivera's locker, while Alex Rodriguez's locker remains vacant during his season-long suspension.

Rodriguez was suspended, originally, for 211-games by Major League Baseball for his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal. After a long arbitration process, the suspension was reduced to just 162-games, equaling the entire 2014 season.

Tanaka, who the Yankees signed to a seven-year, $155 million contract back in January, was given The Great Mariano's locker after he retire after last season.

“One of the staff members actually told me," Tanaka said through an interpreter. "I was like, ‘I’m not really sure if I should be here.’”

As for another retired player, reliever Shawn Kelley took over the locker of pitcher Andy Pettitte, who also retired with Rivera this past winter.

CC lost a lot of weight this winter: For the second year in a row, CC Sabathia comes into spring training much lighter than the previous year.

Sabathia weighed in at 275 pounds on Friday morning, which by his estimate is the lowest he has been since his days with the Indians. Sabathia was under 300 pounds by the beginning of Spring Training a year ago.

“I really lost a lot of weight last year," Sabathia said. "I went from about 315 to like 280. I just did no carbs and then really worked out. This offseason I watched my diet and worked really hard and I lost five pounds.”

A lot of people feel that his decision to drop weight last winter was one of the causes of his velocity drop in 2013, when in reality, it was likely the fact that he was coming off of an elbow injury that offseason.

No regrets from Jeter: After announcing his plans to retire after the 2014 season, Derek Jeter  said there is no change in his plans to retire.

For now, he's not going to be saying anything else about his decision until his press conference next Wednesday, February 19th, at 11:30am EST in Tampa.

Uniform numbers released: The Yankees also released the uniform numbers for all 66 players in camp this spring.

The most notable are the newly signed players from this winter that weren't cool enough to get their own introductory press conference: Brian Roberts, No. 14; Kelly Johnson, No. 33; Matt Thornton, and Scott Sizemore will be the lucky man to wear No. 24 this spring, Robinson Cano's old number. No. 48. Michael Pineda will get back No. 35, and Brendan Ryan switches to No. 39.

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Gavin Ewbank is the Lead Writer of Yanks Beat Blog, and you can follow him on Twitter (below).

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