Chad Jennings is the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Times Tribune reporter for the Triple A Yankees. On his blog Chad does a great job keeping Yankee fans abreast of what is happening with the Triple A Yankee players.

What sets Jennings apart from other beat writers (both major and minor league varieties) is that he is constantly trying to improve his performance. For example, a while back he posted in a piece that, except for the Jesus Montero’s and Austin Romine’s of the Yankee Universe, he was not fully updated on the lower level Yankee prospects. Then, while in Tampa this spring Jennings goes out to the minor league games and begins to cover the lower level games to actually see who these kids are.

It is truly some great work.

One thing Jennings continues to keep updated is the status of the Rule 5 draft picks taken from the Yankees at December’s winter meetings. The Yankees had four players taken: Reegie Corona (Mariners - taken 1st overall), Zach Kroenke (Marlins), Jason Jones (Twins) and Ivan Nova (Padres).

I wrote here about the Yankees minor league pitchers never getting a chance to perform, and that Jones and Kroenke were almost locks to make their teams. Corona and Nova, the two younger guys, were probably not going to be kept by their teams. Nova was returned to the Yankees, but with his play this spring, Corona had a real good chance of making the Mariners team as a utility infielder.

That chance recently disintegrated when the Mariners traded for utility infielder Chris Burke. Look for Corona to comeback to the Yankees and forge what could be a real good Triple A SS-2B combo of Reegie and Ramiro Pena. Pena should win the Yankee utility infielder spot and will return to Scranton when A-Rod returns from his hip injury.

Included in that previous piece was this gem of a statement:

“In December, the Yankees left Jones and Kroenke unprotected and both were was selected in the Rule 5 draft. Jones will get a great opportunity to be the 12^thman on the Minnesota Twins staff, and Kroenke is probably a lock to be in the Florida Marlins bullpen. New York Mets fans will see Kroenke, a former teammate of Joba’s at Nebraska, coming in many times this year to face Carlos Delgado with men on base.“

Met fans (and Delgado) got a reprieve from the Marlins GM, as I missed out on the Kroenke thoughts. He is now back with the Yankees, but Jason Jones was liked by the Twins and a trade was worked out between the Twins and Yankees. Although not kept on the 25 man roster (basically because Phil Humber is out of options), Jones will get to pitch in AAA and likely be the call up in case of injury to a pitcher or Humber’s ineffectiveness.

It is interesting about the “out of options” scenarios you see around the league in regards to roster decisions. Why should a guy make the major league team if he isn’t as good as another player? Why is the ”major leaguer” kept around because you don’t want to lose him to another team? If he was good enough, he would be part of your team now, not the future.

And when a player is out of option, it usually means he has had his time to shine and fizzled out instead.

The Yankees had that situation with Melky Cabrera and Jose Veras. Both were out of options and if cut, both would have been lost in waivers. Cabrera and Veras, however are good enough to help the Yankees now, and will break camp with the club.

It simply does not make sense though for the Twins to keep Humber over Jones. Jones pitched better than Humber all spring, but since the Twins do not want to lose one of the players received in the Johan Santana deal, he makes the team over a better, and more deserving pitcher. The idea is to make your team better - not worse - especially a team with A.L. Central Division title aspirations like the Twins have.

This is a far different scenario than the Tampa Bay Rays had last season with Evan Longoria being sent down to Triple A or Baltimore Orioles catcher Matt Wieters being sent down near the end of this spring training. Both teams wanted to extend their “ownership and control” years of these young players, and in the Orioles case, they will not contend this season, so it makes sense for the Orioles to give Wieters another month or two in the minors.

The Yankees will have almost all their Rule 5 players back, and that helps the organization tremendously. It means the Yankees made the correct choices on who to protect on the 40 man roster, guys like Anthony Claggett, Christian Garcia, Eric Hacker, Wilkin De Le Rosa and Michael Dunn. And the Yankees still have Kroenke (7-0, 2.85 ERA, .190 Avg A., 54 K’s in 53 Innings in AA and AAA), Ivan Nova and probably Corona back in their system.

Some of those guys might not make the team in the Bronx, but with more arms in the system, especially the lefties in Dunn, Kroenke and De La Rosa, the Yankees are primed to have a strong bullpen for quite some time.

Lets just hope they get an opportunity.