Coming in to spring training the Yankees had a handful of “battles” going on at different positions. Aaron Judge needed to lock up the right field job and Greg Bird needed to lock up the first base job. While they still had something to prove, those weren’t really battles since neither really had much competition. The only “true” battle where players are actually competing is in the rotation.
Masahiro Tanaka, CC Sabathia, and (ugh) Michael Pineda all have rotation spots locked up. But the last two spots were up for grabs.