Jimmy Sez

This post is part of a series that includes material originally written for  The New York Yankees All-Time All-Stars  but had to hit the cutting room floor prior to publication. For other posts in the series you can search for the label "Author's Cut" on this site. After selecting the All-Time All-Stars for the book there were plenty of players that just missed the cut. Many of these players were included in the Honorable Mentions section, but naturally some cuts had to be made there as well. Here's the best of the rest, or the Slightly Less Honorable Mentions, if you will. Each of these guys was important to the Yankees during their career in some way, shape or form. Snuffy Stirnweiss – Second Base The majority of his value as a Yankee came during 1944 and 1945 while most of baseball’s superstars served in World War II. He led all American League position players in WAR both years. He remained a viable starter for the Yankees for a few years after the war and e...

This post is part of a series that includes material originally written for  The New York Yankees All-Time All-Stars  but had to hit the cutting room floor prior to publication. For other posts in the series you can search for the label "Author's Cut" on this site. “Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known…the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow?” – Lou Gehrig The mass exodus of Boston Red Sox to greener pastures with the New York Yankees was not limited to players. In 1920, Red Sox manager Ed Barrow saw the writing on the wall in Boston and jumped at the Yankees’ offer to oversee all of their baseball affairs. For the next 24 years he served as the architect of the most consistently successful team in the history of baseball. Innovative, demanding, and as competitive as they come, Barrow was the man responsible for setting set the standard that all Yankee fans have now come to know and love. Born shortly after the Civil War ended in Springfiel...

This post is part of a series that includes material originally written for  The New York Yankees All-Time All-Stars  but had to hit the cutting room floor prior to publication. For other posts in the series you can search for the label "Author's Cut" on this site. “He knew how to hold a ball club together. He was a master psychologist. I thought he was a very brilliant man in many ways. He’d leave one player alone. He’d get one mad. Like Yogi he’d leave alone, and me he’d get mad all the time.” – Billy Martin The New York Yankees were at a crossroads in 1949. They had enjoyed unthinkable success under Joe McCarthy in the 1930’s and early 1940’s, but in the five years from 1944 through 1948 they had won only one World Series and were underwhelmed by Bucky Harris’ two-year stint as manager. Instead they handed the keys over to Casey Stengel, who in nine years as a manger in the National League compiled a record that stood 161 games below .500 and never finished bett...

This post is part of a series that includes material originally written for  The New York Yankees All-Time All-Stars  but had to hit the cutting room floor prior to publication. For other posts in the series you can search for the label "Author's Cut" on this site. In the first   two  parts of this series the focus was on position players and how their value is translated into wins. Pitchers are up next as we conclude this primer on WAR. As mentioned in the previous two installments, if you want to dig even deeper into WAR, Baseball Reference's  WAR Explainer   is recommended reading. Runs Surrendered The total number of runs given up by the pitcher, whether they were deemed earned or not. Down the road this will be compared to the average expected runs surrendered by the pitcher to arrive at a wins total. Fielding Adjustment Astute observers probably noticed that unearned runs are included in the pitcher’s total from the outset and cried foul. Th...

This post is part of a series that includes material originally written for  The New York Yankees All-Time All-Stars  but had to hit the cutting room floor prior to publication. For other posts in the series you can search for the label "Author's Cut" on this site. “Our manager has taught us what we have to do to win. Everyone on this team plays hard and is ready to perform when he calls on them.” – Derek Jeter Like Casey Stengel before him, Joe Torre getting hired as Yankee manager was a head-scratcher. After a long and productive career as a player he transitioned right into managing where he excelled at losing consistently. By the time he reached the Yankees he was the sad clown of baseball, and nobody expected those fortunes to change in The Bronx. Yet, just like Stengel did, he shocked the baseball world and helped crown the Yankees the unquestioned kings of the diamond again. His cool demeanor and sober approach to baseball’s daily grind was tailor made for th...

This post is part of a series that includes material originally written for  The New York Yankees All-Time All-Stars  but had to hit the cutting room floor prior to publication. For other posts in the series you can search for the label "Author's Cut" on this site. In  Volume 1  of this WAR Primer series we gave an overview of the run components that make up the base of the WAR and WAA calculations. Here we'll dig in deeper as to how those run totals are converted to wins. As with the previous volume, if reading this leaves you wanting more, Baseball Reference's  WAR Explainer  is highly recommended. WAA - Wins Above Average Number of wins added by the player above that of an average player. In order to arrive at WAA, we start with the run components already described in Volume 1 and include one more not touched on yet. The last one is a positional adjustment known as Rpos. It’s no secret that throughout baseball history, players at certain positio...

This post is part of a series that includes material originally written for  The New York Yankees All-Time All-Stars  but had to hit the cutting room floor prior to publication. For other posts in the series you can search for the label "Author's Cut" on this site. “ The greatest manager who ever lived. ” – Waite Hoyt The Yankees have come to be known as the gold standard of excellence in baseball, but that wasn’t always the case. The first 15 years of the franchise’s existence was marked by near misses at best and complete futility at worst. Miller Huggins was hired as manager in 1918 to help change those fortunes, and while his impact wasn’t immediate, he eventually would mold the Yankees into a world class team. Undersized and ultracompetitive as a player, Huggins was the same as a manager and transformed what was a team of mercenaries into a tight-knit group of competitors. More than anyone, Huggins was responsible for setting the foundation of a winning cul...