The Yankees have not officially announced who will be starting their first exhibition games when Grapefruit League play kicks off on Saturday, but David Phelps looks like he’s a safe bet to see some early action.

Phelps was among the group of pitchers pitching simulated games on the mound at George M. Steinbrenner Field this morning, working without the protective L-screen in the way. He had an unexpected test to his reflexes, as Ronnier Mustelier laced one of Phelps’ pitches right back up the middle.

“I heard it. I didn’t see it,” Phelps said. “Robbie [Cano] probably would have had it.”

No shame in that. Phelps had a good scouting report to offer about Mustelier: “He’s a good hitter. He can swing it.”

Phelps threw the equivalent of two innings; 35 to 40 pitches. Adam Warren, Brett Marshall and Nik Turley were also on the mound this morning, pitching to Mustelier, Cito Culver and Corban Joseph.

Pitchers working live batting practice this morning include: Dave Robertson, Jim Miller, Nick Goody, Dellin Betances and Juan Cedeno.

Players will hit the field for stretch at 11 a.m., with defensive drills and batting practice groups to follow.

By my count, there were more than a half-dozen occasions during Robinson Cano’s chat with the media this afternoon in which he referenced a desire to win a World Series championship or to hoist the World Series trophy.

It’s safe to say, then, that the instructions in Cano’s playbook as he enters into a huge free agency year say he should just block out all of that noise and focus on what he can control in 2013. It’s not a bad strategy, and he’s certainly not the first to try it.

“I’m going to be honest with you guys; I’m just focused right now on the season,” Cano said. “Just prepare myself, get ready for the season and help the team win another championship. I’m not thinking about anything. Those kind of things, I’ll just let my agent, Scott [Boras], handle it. I’ll just have fun in the clubhouse and get ready to help the team win another championship.”

We’ve already heard from Hal Steinbrenner that the Yankees had a couple of conversations with Boras about locking Cano up to a long-term extension, but there haven’t been much rumblings on the topic since. The general expectation is that, as long as Cano wraps up 2013 healthy, he’s primed to cash in big time: early estimates peg the Boras camp as searching in the ballpark of an eight to 10 year deal worth around $25 million per season.

It’s going to take a big chunk of change to keep Cano in pinstripes, but the Yankees could dig deep and get it done. The question is, with the $189 million payroll objective looming on the horizon, what would they have left to spend on the other pieces of the club? Cano made his stance pretty clear — as far as he’s concerned, he’d rather think about that down the road.

“I’m not worried about anything right now, like I said,” Cano said. “I still have one year and just got to go out there and just perform. I’ve got another year and my focus now is to help the team, be with my teammates and have fun. At the end of the season, just end it up with the [World Series] trophy.”

• Derek Jeter took ground balls and hit on the field during today’s workout, the first time that he has taken batting practice on the diamond. Jeter did not run the bases and the Yankees have permitted him to skip on-field running and stretching for now. He said that his ankle is holding up fine, but the rest of his body is feeling pretty sore. As he said, it’ll take some time to get in baseball shape, and he’s about two weeks behind where he’d usually be.
• Ichiro Suzuki has a wonderful sense of humor that translates in any language. His first comment right out of the box this spring, asked about his impressions from the first day of camp: “Derek Jeter was not the eater that the media portrayed him to be. It was good to see him that way.” Apparently, Ichiro has the New York Post delivered in Japan during the winter.
• Speaking of Jeter, someone asked him to clear up exactly what he meant by saying he rode around on a scooter this winter. To be honest, I pictured Jeter puttering around his Florida mansion on one of those electric-charged vehicles, but Jeter said that wasn’t the case: “No, man. You put your leg on it, your knee on it, and you roll it with your other leg. It’s not a motorized scooter. I’m not handicapped. It’s just easier than crutches.”
• Jeter tried to bait the media into buying the idea that if everything goes well tomorrow in camp, he could be cleared to play in the World Baseball Classic. No dice, though he did urge the reporters crowded around his locker to ask Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman, just to see what they’d say.
• Pitching prospect Mark Montgomery is sidelined with back spasms, marking the second injury update of camp. Montgomery is one of the club’s touted relievers and there has been speculation he could help the big league club this year. He had to be scratched from a bullpen session yesterday.
• Girardi was asked a few different ways about his early thoughts for the lineup, specifically the spots for Cano and Ichiro, but he said that he doesn’t want to get into it this early because he hasn’t talked to the players involved. Girardi said that he’d like to see where the team is around March 25 before he starts seriously putting anything in ink.
• Finally, one last thing — a few days ago, I saw Girardi pointing to the ceiling outside the workout room. A pair of dangling gymnastic rings materialized in the next few hours, and that’s not something you usually see in the basement of a stadium. Girardi said that they’re actually for his own Crossfit workout. That’s intense. I won’t name names, but a few reporters tried to see if they could pull themselves up and push their body above the rings, the way Girardi said he does. Care to guess how that turned out?

It was about this time two years that Mark Teixeira arrived in camp and, with a straight face, said that he viewed the Yankees as underdogs. The Red Sox were stealing all of the headlines then, trumpeting the big signings of Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford (hey, those didn’t work out so well!), and Teixeira thought people were sleeping on the Yanks too much.

Fast forward to today, and suddenly we’re right back in the same conversation. The Yankees didn’t make much noise this past winter and the Blue Jays seem to be the new media darlings, so Teixeira wonders where the fanfare has been for the boys in the Bronx.

“I’m so excited. I really feel good about our team this year,” Teixeira said. “It’s actually fun when everyone else counts you out because it kind of makes guys want it a little bit more. Every year we want it, but this year especially, it’s going to be even more of a challenge. I think that’s going to make it more exciting as the year goes on.”

Teixeira acknowledges that the Yankees are going to have to shuffle the formula a little bit this year, losing power from guys like Nick Swisher, Raul Ibanez, Russell Martin and Eric Chavez. Then again, as the Yanks anticipate getting full seasons from Brett Gardner and Ichiro Suzuki, Teixeira said he thinks the lineup will be much more effective stealing bases and executing hit-and-runs.

That could come in handy in an American League East that, no matter whom you want to pick as the favorite, absolutely no one views as a soft place to play.

“All you hear about is the Blue Jays. That’s good,” Teixeira said. “They had a heck of an offseason and it’s a very good team. We have five quality teams in our division. It used to be that you had to worry about maybe one or two teams and you hoped to win two out of three or sweep the bottom teams. That’s not going to happen this year. Every single game in our division is going to be tough.”

• Lots of live batting practice on the field this morning at George M. Steinbrenner Field as camp continues to move toward game action. Here’s the full list of pitchers who took the mound: Ivan Nova, Joba Chamberlain, Cody Eppley, Bryan Mitchell; Matt Daley, Chase Whitley; Mark Montgomery, Preston Claiborne; Francisco Rondon, Josh Spence; Mike O’Brien, Shane Greene; Corey Black, Kelvin Perez. 
• The Yankees had to summon some of their Minor League hitters to work all of those at-bats. Those taking swings were: Slade Heathcott, Luke Murton, Cito Culver, Greg Bird, Kyle Roller, Tyler Austin and Ronnier Mustelier.
• Joe Girardi said that he did not hear anyone had problems with their physicals this morning. The first full squad workout for the Yankees is tomorrow morning.
• The Yankees have their first injury of camp, as infield prospect David Adams will miss a couple of weeks while he deals with a back injury. You may remember Adams as the player that came between the Yankees and the Mariners in the Cliff Lee talks back in July 2010; Adams was said to have a high ankle sprain that the Mariners believed (and was later confirmed) to be an ankle fracture.
• The Yankees may have found a designated hitter against left-handed pitching, at least for early in the season: Derek Jeter. Girardi said that he’d “absolutely” consider giving the captain DH days against southpaws to help rest his ankle, so Eduardo Nunez might want to use this spring to gobble up a few extra reps at shortstop. Travis Hafner will DH against right-handed pitching.
• Speaking of Hafner, it’s part of the notebook on yankees.com, but worth passing along again here. He hasn’t played the field since 2007 with the Indians because of an arthritic throwing elbow, and I asked if he even brings a glove to camp. Hafner said that he gets a shipment of two first basemen’s gloves but usually winds up giving them away. He’s strictly a DH for the Yankees’ purposes, so all he really needs is his bats.

There wasn’t all that much happening on a light day at Yankees camp, but the coaching staff was paying a lot of attention to the 25-pitch bullpen sessions tossed by Michael Pineda and Cesar Cabral this morning.

Pineda is important to the Yankees for obvious reasons, but let’s not overlook Cabral, who had a legitimate chance of making the big league roster last March before he fractured his left elbow late in camp. That injury cleared the way for Clay Rapada to make the team, and while Cabral won’t be pitching in games this spring, Joe Girardi said that it’s possible Cabral will work his way into games in May. From there, it might just be a quick jump to helping the Yankees at the big league level.

When they watch rehabbing pitchers work, Girardi said that he and pitching coach Larry Rothschild pay close attention to the arm speed, how the ball looks coming out of the pitcher’s hand, and their mechanics (Pineda said this week that his mechanics look on video about the same as they did during his Seattle days, which is good news for the Yankees). Girardi also watches to see if a pitcher needs too much time between pitches.

“Those are the things that you kind of look for,” Girardi said. “When they start taking a lot of time inbetween pitches you get a little bit concerned but he was, here it is, right to work.”

The Yankees will make up for today’s light workout with a very busy Saturday, kicking off around 8:30 a.m. with live batting practice sessions. Position players are due to report in camp on Sunday and the Yankees’ first full-squad workout will be held on Monday.

• That old saying about not being able to tell the players without a scorecard has never been more true than this spring, and the vendors hawking rosters in the grandstands should be doing brisk business shortly. The Yankees have a staggering 84 players in camp, which Girardi said is by far the largest turnout he can remember for a Spring Training.Girardi said he’s trying to learn names and faces, but he admitted to carrying around a roster sheet just to keep track of who is who. It doesn’t help matters that several players are wearing the same uniform number — everything from No. 87 up is double-issued. I understand why that was done, but it would have been fun to see a triple-digit player in camp.
• There’s no official word on when Jorge Posada will be joining the guest instructors, but he’s on the way. Girardi said he also spoke recently to Yogi Berra, who is disappointed to not be able to hit camp this spring. Guest instructors currently in camp include Goose Gossage, Ron Guidry and David Wells.
• One more tidbit from this morning’s conversation with Kevin Youkilis: he said that his wife and kids are all excited about spending this year living in New York City, as is he. Youkilis’ clarification of his Red Sox comments from yesterday will only help make that transition a little bit more peaceful. He also said that an offseason wedding photo in Hawaii showcased “the most Yankees t-shirts you’ve ever seen in a Youkilis family.”
• Might as well toss it in here — Joba Chamberlain said he gave Kevin Youkilis a handshake and a fist-bump when they greeted each other this morning. Someone (it wasn’t me, I promise) asked Chamberlain why he didn’t hug Youkilis. His response: “It’s kind of awkward. I was changing. I was taking my shirt off, so I didn’t know if that’s the best time for a man-hug in the first time.” The logic is difficult to argue.