UPDATE (Path to Carcosa released):

Now that William Yorick joined the ranks, Baseball Bat has found it's love. His ability is meant to retrieve assets from the discard pile. The risk of splitting the bat during a swing is huge (3 out of 16 tokens), so besides Yorick's convenient retrieval method, there are two more investigators likely using the bat: Wendy Adams can reduce the risk of breaking the bat in the first place with her draw-again-ability, and Agnes Baker could use it as a fallback weapon together with her spells.

With the bat in both hands you can hold ground against a group of enemies and deal 2 damage with each blow consistently. The +2 is a dire necessity for investigators who are weak in the knees.

Pros

• Unconditional +1 damage, doesn't use up supplies, +2 for each attack.
• Can be retrieved with Scavenging or Yorick's ability.

Cons

• Two-handed weapon. Don't underestimate this drawback - this weapon competes not only with other weapons, in fact, you should consider any asset which you can not play while baseball bat fills your hands. One could include Bandolier to attenuate this disadvantage.
• There is a high risk of losing it at the worst possible moment.
• Don't waste it to boost skill tests.

The leather coat is the current state-of-the-art proactive damage prevention tool! As a survivor character, i would pack one every time i go out adventuring. The inclusion is harder to justify for other factions as they miss the opportunity to recycle old coats.

Pros

• Leather Coat uses a body slot, only two other cards, Bulletproof Vest, Fine Clothes, compete for this slot.
• Phenomenal install cost. It's a handy throw-away card if you are hit by events which force you to throw assets away. I would argue further that a second copy in your deck is never a dead draw.
• Combines well with Scavenging
• Great click compression, compared to other heal tools like Emergency Aid, First Aid, Medical Texts and Painkillers. Guardians more likely use Dodge to avoid 2 damage.

Cons

• Protects the wearer only.
• Should be played before enemies appear, during a fight it's useless.
• Don't waste it to boost skill tests.

So people wax happy for Jims trumpet in multiplayer, where it triggers very often. Do not be fooled, however, as even though the trumpet triggers 4x as often your allies are taking roughly 4x as much horror in aggregate. In this sense it matches the scale of the game in multiplayer, but it does not exceed it.

Although there is a catch. When Jim plays you can choose who gets the horror. In a 3p game with Jim Daisy and Roland, Jim can tail Roland and play his sweet soothing jazz, effectively moving some of the games horror load from fragile Roland to mentally hardy Daisy and Jim. This margin is where the trumpet is actually super effective in multiplayer.

that being said the trumpet can do work on its own in solo or 2p, provided you have the action economy to afford it. Further Jim's passives make him pretty hardy in hard and Expert difficulties, so don't let his unique asset scare you away from trying him there!

As far as exile cards go I think this is a miss where Flare is a massive hit.

My main concern here is the cost. 2 boxes and an to install and an to use the exile ability. The ability isn't bad, + 3 to evade is good. But already has good options for evading like Survival Instinct. Flares similar +3 to fight and + 2 damage seems much better and fills a needed slot especially in solo. Also it's an event so only uses 2 boxes and one .

Let's move on to the other ability. Pretty much Knife but it costs one more and one influence.

With the current register of Wendy Adams and "Ashcan" Pete I don't see a place for this card.

The Doom tokens on this card are removed when the Agenda advances, so it can be safely used on all of your Will and Fight tests, the turn that the Agenda is going to advance anyways (unless there is an Agenda that gets worse the more Doom it has on it when it advances. Can't think of one off the top of my head, but I wouldn't put it past them...)