Jimmy Sez

The Yankees may have missed out on the Yoshinobu Yamamoto sweepstakes this winter, but they did land a major score by acquiring Juan Soto for a five-player package that included four pitchers. For years now, it's been no secret that the Yankees need a quality left-handed bat to balance out their lineup. In Soto, they didn't just get a quality bat but a transcendant one that could potentially get the Yankee offense back to the top of the American League. Just how good is Soto? Let's look at this from a number of different angles to put it in perpsective. For the traditionalists The 25-year old Soto has played in only six seasons but has already proven to have one of the greatest batting eyes in baseball history in that short time. In each of the past three seasons he has drawn at least 130 walks, leading the majors each time. He ranked in the top ten in the NL in walks for the three seasons before that and since 2018 has walked a total of 640 times. Bryce Harper's 504 in...

Our Hall of Fame coverage here at Jimmy Sez continues with our first look at the recently released BBWAA ballot for 2024 . The list includes eight former Yankees, and most of them have garnered enough support from the electorate to settle in for a nice, long stay on the ballot. That's certainly the case with the first four candidates we'll dig in to, who were put into a group simply because their first or last initial allows me to reference an 80's TV show in the title of this post. Only one player from this group has an outside chance to gain election this year, but it wouldn't be surprising to see all of them in the Hall of Fame eventually. Even if it's through the back door via a Veterans Committee vote further down the road. For each player, their JAWS (Jaffe Average WAR Score, developed by Jay Jaffe) value is given along with the average Hall of Famer's JAWS at the player's position. JAWS is a Hall of Fame rating system based on WAR that incorporates ...

The Baseball Hall of Fame recently announced the candidates that will be included on the 2024 ballot for the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee to consider. The eight-person ballot is comprised of those who contributed to baseball as a manager, executive, or umpire since 1980. Of those eight, two candidates have strong ties to the Yankees. As is usually the case with these Veterans Committees, it will be difficult for any of the eight to be voted in since the electorate will be limited to just four votes, and 75% of that vote will be needed for election. Obviously, I'll be pulling for the gentlemen detailed below when the results are announced on December 3rd. Lou Piniella Sweet Lou spent 15 years of his long baseball career as a Yankee in some way, shape or form. A former Rookie of the Year and All-Star with the Royals, Piniella was traded to the Yankees prior to the 1974 season. For the next 11 years he was a key contributor to the Yankees mainly in a hybrid fourth outfielder/d...

Talk about your all-time duds. The Yankees opened 2023 with championship aspirations, yet here we are at the end of September and they are a lost franchise with no direction, identity, or clear path back to respectability. Recent history tells us that there's no reason to have faith in Yankee leadership this offseason, so let's instead re-live the glory days. I have an aunt and uncle that live in Maine. If you haven't been, I highly recommend it, any part of the state will do. Anyway, in my younger days my family used to visit them each summer and one of those years we got to talking to their neighbors who discovered that we were a family of Yankee fans. For some reason, they had a collection of framed photos of Yankee legends in their basement. As Red Sox fans, they had no use for them and offered them to us for the bargain price of zero dollars. Who said Red Sox fans aren't sweethearts? Of course, we took the photos home and put them right in our basement where they r...

 "Obviously, we're in it to win it. So you know, we stayed the course." - Brian Cashman on August 1, 2023  When the Yankees' GM uttered these words right after the trade deadline, I let out an audible laugh. What else does he think is obvious? That dogs smell better after a long walk in the rain? That a trip to the DMV is a pleasant experience? That Rocky V is the best movie of the series? The Yankees are in full-blown free fall mode after doing absolutely nothing to improve a lineup with glaring holes both before and during this season. The only folks who seem to think this is not a problem are the ones sitting in the Yankees' front office making all of the key decisions. It's a bad look. Rather than digging into the current mess, I'd rather reminisce. The 2023 Yankees have me thinking a lot about the 1990 iteration of the team when they hit rock bottom as a franchise. That year they went 67-95 which was good for a .414 winning percentage, the lowest any...