Jimmy Sez

About a month ago, Yankee legend - and good friend of Jimmy Sez - Derek Jeter dropped an unexpected bombshell on Major League Baseball. He was stepping down as CEO of the Miami Marlins and selling is 4% stake in the team. The timing was curious. When Jeter took over the Marlins in 2017 he immediately began clearing house in Miami. Most notably, Giancarlo Stanton was sent to New York for pennies on the dollar. It was all part of a concerted effort to rebuild the organization from the ground up. Now that it seemed he could enter the fun part of a rebuild where you actually field a quality team and win games, he decided to cash out. So what gives? Jeter will always be a player at heart. So the ugly war waged between MLB ownership and the players' union this offseason may have had something to do with him wanting out of the ownership game. But the ultra-competitive Jeter's parting words as well as the comments of those close to him afterwards reveal the true nature of his departu...

The people who run baseball are busy doing what they do best. No sleep for them until they finish setting the game back a solid 30 years by cancelling part of their season and making it as joyless as it could possibly be. Fear not, by the time fall rolls around, the MLB commissioner will wonder aloud why interest in the game is waning, then curiously point to "analytics" as the main reason. I have a headache just thinking about it, but I digress. With the start of the 2022 baseball season nowhere in sight, I want to take the opportunity to write about a group of people that baseball owners unequivocally care nothing about: young men trying to become major league baseball players. The venerable Keith Law at The Athletic has released his annual Top 100 MLB Prospect list . The young Yankees on this list are of particular interest given that the only way the big league team is going to get out of its current rut is through home-grown players. Over the last 20 years the organizat...

We closed 2021 with our first peek at some former Yankees the 2022 BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot. Now it's time to dig in to the more controversial figures as baseball continues to deal with the fallout from the "steroid" era. This year will be the final shot for Roger Clemens and it looks like it will be a photo finish for him. As he exits we also welcome newcomer Alex Rodriguez who's sure to generate just as much, if not more, controversy than Clemens has in his ten years on the ballot. 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 they player's position. JAWS is a Hall of Fame rating system based on WAR that incorporates both career and peak value. If you're interested in learning more about this, click here . Roger Clemens  - Starting Pitcher, JAWS: 102.6, HoF JAWS: 61.4 If pitchers are to be judged based solely on what they accomplished on the mound, Roger Cleme...

After the small committee elections this past fall, the Baseball Hall of Fame will welcome six new - and long overdue - members next year. The more traditional BBWAA election is happening currently which could potentially add to that class. There are some players on this year's ballot who have come tantalizingly close to election in recent years and are looking at their last shot at enshrinement through the BBWAA. From a pure baseball perspective, these players would have been elected long ago, but suspected PED use and/or public controversies have kept Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling out of Cooperstown thus far. Joining them this year for the first time is Alex Rodriguez, who is likely to suffer the same fate as the aforementioned trio. More to come on his case in a future post. In the meantime, we'll cover some other former Yankees present on the ballot. Joining Rodriguez as a first-timer on the ballot is Mark Teixeira, who spent the majority of his career in ...

This weekend the Baseball Hall of Fame will announce the results of the votes held by the Early Baseball Era and Golden Days Era Committees this fall. These are two of the four time period-based committees that give players who may have been overlooked in the more traditional baseball writers vote a second chance at enshrinement in Cooperstown. The Early Baseball Era vote is especially intriguing as seven of the ten players eligible this year are former Negro League stars. As Negro League players are severely underrepresented in the Hall of Fame currently, this is a great opportunity to add players who will help tell a more complete story about baseball history. The main focus here, though, will be the former New York Yankees present on these ballots. In all, there are four players across these two groups who spent at least part of their career in pinstripes. For each nominee, if 12 members of their respective 16-person committee vote yes, they will get a plaque in Cooperstown. With c...