On December 1st the Mets signed the pride of Elizabeth, New Jersey – Jimmy Yacabonis. The Christian Brother Academy and St. Joseph University alum was drafted by the Orioles in the 13th round back in 2013.
He made his major league debut with the Orioles back in 2017 and pitched in 55 games for the birds over the next three seasons. Since then he bounced around the Padres, Mariners, Rays and Marlins. Last season he pitched for both Florida based teams totaling 14 innings over 14 games with an 8.36 ERA, 6.40 FIP, 2.143 WHIP and a 49 ERA+. He was much more effective in the minors last season pitching 33 2/3 innings over 27 games with a 3.21 ERA and a 1.188 WHIP.
This has pretty much been Jimmy’s story over the last nine seasons. His minor league stats are pretty good. He has a career 3.25 ERA in 443 innings of work over 285 games. In the majors he has a 6.03 career ERA over 118 innings.
According to his Baseball Savant page, Jimmy threw three different pitches in the majors last season – a fastball, slider and changeup. His fastball averaged at 94 mph and he threw it almost 60% of the time (53rd percentile for velocity, 49th for spin). He tossed his low-80’s slider 37% of the time. Jimmy’s high-80’s changeup barely made a major league appearance last season.
There are a lot of pitchers ahead of Jimmy on the depth chart. Unless he has a tremendous spring, he’s most likely going to start the season in Syracuse. It’s going to take either a strong start in Syracuse, other pitchers on the 40-man roster struggling or some surprise injuries for Jimmy to come up to the majors. There is a consistent need for fresh arms during the season – between small injuries, or players being used too much, there’s a constant rotation in the back of the bullpen. There is a strong chance that at some point this season we’ll see Jimmy. The Mets are coming to camp this year with a lot of bullpen depth and Jimmy is part of that.
On a personal note, as a teacher for the last 12 years in Newark, I love when the Mets sign players from Essex/Union/Hudson county area. Usually my students are Yankees fans but we had fun talking about Newark-born Hector Santiago a few years ago when he was on the Mets. Jimmy Yacabonis will definitely end up as a star of a few physics problems in class if he makes the roster at any point this season.
