Inevitably with a series such as this one, you’ll find one or two less notorious names to properly fill a list. So in searching for a former Yankee born on January 19th, we ended up with Fernando Seguignol as the chosen player. If you remember his short period with the Yankees, cheers to you for a great memory considering he had all of one major-league hit in his entire semi-interrupted career in pinstripes. That’s still one more than 99.99 percent of us, though.
Fernando Alfredo Seguignol Born: January
19, 1975 (Bocas del Toro, Panama) Yankees Tenure: 2003 (also in minors 1993-94)
Three years after the Yankees signed the most famous Panamanian in baseball history, they came to terms with his countryman, Fernando Seguignol. At the time the 18-year-old inked his contract with New York in January 1993, only 37 MLB players had ever hailed from Panama; since then, that figure has expanded to 81, including current Yankees utilityman José Caballero. Seguignol’s father, a longtime Yankees fa, and was absolutely thrilled that his son might one day play for the Bronx Bombers.
Seguignol struggled heavily in his first taste of Rookie ball in ’93, but after putting up a reasonable .767 OPS in short-season ball for Oneonta the following campaign, he raised his stock. It was enough to invoke the interest of the desperate Montreal Expos, and Seguignol was used by the Yankees just before the start of the 1995 campaign to acquire standout closer John Wetteland in a one-for-one deal with cash considerations involved.
Make no mistake: For the Expos, this was not about getting fair prospect value. The consortium of Montreal executives that owned the club informed GM Kevin Malone that he essentially had to sell off some of the best players from the outstanding 1994 club that was MLB’s best when the strike hit. It ended on April 2, 1995, and as MLB hastily organized a short spring training and a reduced 144-game schedule, the Expos executed a fire sale. Wetteland was dealt to the Yankees, Ken Hill went to Cleveland, Marquis Grissom was sent out to Atlanta, and though not traded, the Expos simply refused to offer Larry Walker a contract in arbitration; he signed with the Rockies. Credit Yankees GM Gene Michael for taking advantage of the opportunity, but those were some strange circumstances.
The Yankees had no problem trading a low-minors name for Wetteland, and while he felt hurt at the time, it honestly worked out well for Seguignol too, as he had less of an uphill climb to playing time in Montreal. Standing at six-foot-five, Seguignol had the traditional build of a power-hitting first baseman, but through the early years of his development process as an outfielder in the Expos farm system, he failed to live up to those expectations. It wasn’t until 1998 that Seguignol found his footing in Double-A Harrisburg, slugging over .600 and prompting a rapid rise through the ranks, reaching Triple-A and subsequently the majors for a rather small but quite successful first cup of tea.
Called up in September as part of an Expos team that was going nowhere and wanted to get a look at what they had in young bat, Seguignol earned his first hit as a pinch-hitter on September 10th. A day later, the 23-year-old experienced what had to be one of his most thrilling moments in the bigs, going back-to-back with future Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero, easily the star of that 65-97 club.
It’s relatively telling of both the expectations the Expos had regarding Seguignol and, primarily, the lack of talent around Vlad Sr. that Montreal had their inexperienced first baseman batting fifth, right behind Guerrero, the team’s top hitter.
Despite good numbers in a short sample in 1998, Seguignol started the next year in the minors again, with Brad Fulmer as the Expos’ starting first baseman. Looking back at it, it’s difficult to justify why opportunities were so limited for Seguignol between 1999 and 2000, with him spending more time in the minors than majors, despite a decent .828 OPS in 294 PA between these two seasons and two of his 17 career homers against a prestigious name in Tom Glavine. If you want to be a bit harsher, that OPS isn’t nearly as good as it looks, considering the era (105 OPS+), and with many of those PA coming in left field instead of first base, his original position, the defensive value was virtually nonexistent. The strikeout issues were a problem, which didn’t come as much of a surprise, but the lack of pitch selection, which made for well-below-league-average walk rates, further diminished Seguignol’s floor as a big-league hitter.
Too good for Triple-A but unable to lock down a role in the big leagues, Seguignol was in that dreaded Quad-A state, and at the end of 2001, after receiving only 54 PA in the big leagues, he decided to give Japan a try. Seguignol’s strikeout woes made the trip with him however, and the power output wasn’t enough for the Orix BlueWave to justify giving him a full-time role.
Going back to where it first started, Seguignol signed with the Yankees after a short stint in Japan. Although his time with the big league club was short-lived and not particularly memorable, Seguignol’s campaign with the Yankees’ Triple-A team in Columbus was a great one.
As a 28-year-old, the Panamanian had an OPS above 1.000 and nearly won the Triple-A Triple Crown that year by hitting .341/.401/.624 with 28 homers in 106 games. Called up in September, Seguignol went 1-for-7 in the majors with no extra-base hits; his lone career big-league knock in pinstripes came in a post-clinch start on a ground-ball single against the Orioles’ Rodrigo Lopez.
Carrying over the success he had with the Yankees in Triple-A back in 2003, Seguignol returned to Japan, this time signing with the Nippon Ham Fighters. There, he immediately became one of the more dangerous bats in the NPB, hitting 44 home runs in his first season back in Japan — a new record for a switch-hitter. Although he could never quite replicate those numbers, Seguignol remained an important player for the Ham Fighters during four full seasons. Afterwards, he bounced around in Mexico, the minors, signing deals with the Rockies and Tigers without returning to the bigs, and also in the NPB again.
Returning from Japan in 2010 with the Indy ball Newark Bears, Seguignol would play his final season in 2011, featuring as one of the premier names for another Atlantic League club, the Lancaster Barnstormers. That wrapped up a near-20-year professional career. A switch-hitter who learned that trait when he was already in the minors, Seguignol couldn’t build the MLB résumé that he might’ve envisioned in the bigs. However, in Japan, he made history as one of the more fearsome switch-hitters in the history of the NPB, recording 172 homers in 767 games.
Following his playing career, Seguignol stayed involved in the baseball world. He worked for the Yomiuri Giants and the Cubs before landing a job with the Marlins as director of international operations. Hired by old teammate Derek Jeter in 2017 when the former Yankees captain got involved in Miami, Seguignol held the position until being let go in 2021. Wherever he is now, here’s hoping he has a nice 51st birthday ahead of him.
See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.
