The 162- game long season of baseball wouldn’t be complete without some type of entertainment to endure along the way. The Talkin’ Yanks podcast, produced by David Mendelsohn, hosted by Jimmy O’Brien and Jake Storiale are the perfect group to get your Yankee updates, content and news daily.
The podcast originally airing in 2017 gained some following, but in 2019 they went viral after Jimmy (Jomboy) published a breakdown video while watching a Yankee game. The breakdown was on Yankees’ manager Aaron Boone and the home plate umpire of that game. The video, picked up by microphones, was broken down by Jimmy as he made a video of him reading both of their lips as Boone got ejected. O’Brien gained a major following after the video was published and amassed over 300,000 subscribers between the Boone video and other breakdowns of MLB incidents. The Jomboy Media Company was created by the end of 2018, and was also the beginning of the Talkin’ Baseball podcast hosted by Jimmy, Jake and former major league player, Trevor Plouffe.
Episode 660 was uploaded right after the final game of the last Red Sox-Yankees regular season series, in which the Yankees swept Boston. Jomboy and Jake start out the podcast by having a “mood check” and how they felt after the game was over. They started looking into their last two regular season series, both against division rivals and how it could play out into the postseason.
The first segment of the episode goes over a recap from the first game of the series on Friday night. Like in all the other episodes, Jake does his “bern”; his way to recap the game that’s filled with jokes and goes over the major points from the game. Included in the bern are mentions of Giancarlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres and Gerrit Cole who were all big performers from the game. They went on about who pitched in that game. Cole, who started out the game, pitched decently according to both and they said it was the bullpen who came in and solidified the win for the Yankees. They go more in depth about certain plays, stats from the game and the biggest moments as well.
In the recap of the second game of the series, Jake starts it off with another “bern”, which like the one before was exciting and entertaining, listening to all the small details and big plays that turned the game into what it was; a thriller. Something I found pretty interesting was their comparison of Giancarlo Stanton- who in that game delivered a grand slam to put the Yankees on top- to a former Yankee legend, Reggie Jackson. Jake goes on to say that he thinks Giancarlo is “our Reggie Jackson”, he’s going to be their big home run guy in the future. Other mentions went to the pitching staff again, this time being Luis Severino and Michael King who both pitched extremely well.
The recap of the third game of the series started out with yet another “bern” by Jake. After his bern, they started critiquing and commenting on some of the managerial decisions made by Aaron Boone throughout the game. They mentioned that both Boone and Alex Cora -manager of the Red Sox- were playing a “game of chess” throughout the series, having a lot of moving pieces and making moves both offensively and defensively. Another big point brought up by both was the whole game itself, describing it as a “drunk” game; a lot of missed plays by both teams, which led to the score becoming what it was.
After the recaps, they moved onto their “Pride of the Yankees”, the “MFer of the Yankees” and their regular old award segments. The pick for their Pride of the Yankees this series was Giancarlo Stanton, who was unreal throughout the weekend. The Yankee MFer was someone who had underperformed, Jake picked relief pitcher Joely Rodriguez and Jomboy picked outfielder Joey Gallo. Their “Regular Old Awards” segment varies each week and they give unique and charming awards to certain players. This week, for instance, one of them was the “If you don’t fear it, it can’t hurt you” award given to Anthony Rizzo by Jake.
This was the first time I had listened to the Talkin’ Yanks podcast all the way through. I’ve followed them on Instagram and Twitter for years but after listening to it, it really makes me want to listen to it again. The duo of Jake and Jomboy is hilarious. Mixing in comedy, stats and news, – at one point they were talking about the use of their pinkies after reporting on Aaron Judge’s dislocated pinky during the game- they are enjoyable to listen to. They hit on all of the major talking points of the series and Jake nailed his berns throughout the episode. If you’re someone who is really into baseball- specifically the Yankees- and enjoy hearing stats, learning facts and hearing other opinions on it, then the Talkin’ Yanks podcast is definitely something I can recommend.