Jimmy Sez

Last month we began our review and rankings of the plaques on display at Monument Park. We're back with a new batch of bronze. The eight plaques featured here are a notch above the group we looked at last time, but they're not anything to write home about either. Rest assured that things will be looking pretty good from here on out. Ground-level view of the original Monument Park in Old Yankee Stadium. wallyg/Wikimedia Commons As was the case last time,  I won't share a picture of every plaque because they tend to run together and get redundant as you scan through them. For any that I don't have a picture of below, it's relatively easy to find via google . 24. Lou Gehrig - dedicated on July 4, 1941 A minimilast approach here for Lou, whose plaque was the second one commissioned by the Yankees after Miller Huggins. The first bit reads just like Babe Ruth's plaque, and awkwardly starts with this sentence: "A man." His consecutive games streak is mention...

Recently, Joe Posnanski - the greatest baseball writer of our generation - undertook the task of ranking all of the plaques currently captured in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It's an interesting project, and certainly a unique way to dig through baseball history. Naturally, those rankings got me thinking about the Yankees and how we could do a similar exercise with the plaques housed in Monument Park. At the very least, it would be a good way to distract myself from the beatings they took recently from the Red Sox, Orioles, Braves, and Mets. In these rankings I focused only on plaques that cover what I'll call "uniformed" Yankees. That is, players and managers only. The handful of other plaques in Monument Park tend to be quite different in nature. I'm also ignoring the blue plaques beneath the retired numbers in Monument Park. There's a subset of players and managers who have been honored with a bronze plaque that have also had their uniform number...

Just a few weeks ago, Aaron Judge had wrapped up the month of April hitting .207, striking out at an alarming rate, and instilling general panic among the Yankee fanbase. What a difference a few weeks can make. Since the calendar turned to May, Judge has been consistently murdering baseballs and suddenly the Yankees lead the American League in runs scored, home runs, walks, on-base percentage, and OPS. Even with Juan Soto's auspicious start to his Yankee career, Judge now leads the team in home runs, walks, slugging and OPS. This is nothing new, of course. When Aaron Judge is healthy, he's always been among the best hitters in baseball. But the recent heater that he's on has revealed a new dimension to his game that we've never really seen before. It's a dimension that Foreigner - the soon-to-be Rock and Roll Hall of Famers - would be proud of . When it gets through to me, it's always new to me Prior to 2024, it was no secret that Judge's power came mostly ...

It only took about 25 years or so, but the New York Knicks are finally a part of the daily basketball conversation in America again. As a die-hard Knicks fan and Villanova graduate , I couldn't be happier about how they got here. But before we get there, let's briefly review their recent history. Since an improbable run to the NBA Finals in 1999, the Knicks franchise has been various combinations of disappointing, sad, embarrassing, comical, and just plain pathetic. They traded their way from a decent roster to a mediocre one to a bad one, then even worse. They tried piloting those rosters with Hall of Fame coaches who were clearly looking for a big contract and little else (as evidenced by Larry Brown literally choosing his starting lineup based on whose hometown they were playing near). They handed the keys to the franchise over to Isaiah Thomas who hit a dubious trifecta by failing as a GM, head coach, and human being during his tenure. Knicks decision makers almost came to ...

Yankee baseball that counts is almost here, and it can't come soon enough. For every feel good story we had this spring - like Giancarlo Stanton's resurgent form - there's been a mysterious elbow injury for Gerrit Cole or another foot injury for DJ LeMahieu or a bum shoulder for Oswald Peraza. Just start the season already... But before we do, let's see what's happening down on the farm in Yankeeland. Last month Keith Law released his annual Top 100 MLB Prospect List as well as his system rankings across the league. In recent years the Yankees have been slowly climbing up Law's rankings , coming in at #14 in 2023, but after a blockbuster trade for Juan Soto is the cupboard bare? All that and more will be answered below as we take a Sergio Leone-style dive into Law's treasure trove of information. The Good The Yankees' system is in the top ten of the major leagues! Despite last year's top prospect Anthony Volpe graduating to the majors and unloading...

Last year I told the story of meeting Don Mattingly and from there committed to the quest of getting the rest of the living Yankees All-Time All-Stars to sign a copy of the book. Luckily, the folks at Hall of Fame Signings hosted another Pinstripe Pride event earlier this month in north Jersey. There, I was able to get the autographs of five more legends, which means seven of the 17 living All-Stars have now signed. While it was thrilling to meet each of the five who signed this year, I won't have nearly as much to say about the encounter as I did with Donnie Baseball. Ya know, you only get to meet your childhood hero for the first time once. So here's a brief description of each exchange with a picture of my ugly mug next to some guys that you'd much rather see. Before digging in, I do need to give a shout out to Hall of Fame Signings for a dramatically improved experience at the event for 2024. There was far more space at the venue, organization, and predictability wh...

Here we are, the thrilling conclusion of our 2024 Hall of Fame coverage at Jimmy Sez. In our last installment we covered some of the more controversial characters on this year's BBWAA ballot, and this crop of players will be no different. Steroids? Sign-stealing scandals? Obesity? It's all here. The players below all joined the Yankees at a ripe old age, which allowed me to use another 80's TV show in the title. No one from this group will get elected this year, but the two most controversial candidates will continue to have their cases pondered, whether via the BBWAA or a Veterans Commitee in the future. 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 both career and peak value. If you're interested in learning more about this, click here . Bartolo Colon - Starting Pitcher, JAWS:...