“am I being redundant when I say arrogant Yankee fans” No, but please take it to the “Bleeding Yankee Blue” thread.
I don’t think anyone, even the most arrogant of Yankee fans—am I being redundant when I say “arrogant Yankee fans? - thought the Yankees would be in 1st place in the AL East at the All-Star break. Certainly not after losing their big stud starter Michael Pineda before the season started and Mariano Rivera shortly after, not to mention the loss of Brett Gardner, who played just 9 games, and Joba Chamberlain, who hasn’t pitched all season.
And even the few fans who thought the Yankees would survive those catastrophes and contend for the top spot certainly didn’t think they would be in front by a whopping 7 games.
Regardless of how the rest of the division has underperformed, most of the credit has to go to the Yankees. No one, except for maybe Robinson Cano, is having a superstar-type year, and both Mark Teixiera and Alex Rodriguez are having sub-par seasons. But everyone on the team is contributing something. For instance, A-Rod is playing an excellent 3rd base and has been running the bases brilliantly, stealing 9 out of 10. In fact, the Yankees, though they are not a base-stealing team, have the highest base-stealing percentage in the league (tied with the Angels at 81 percent).
Repoz
Posted: July 14, 2012 at 08:10 AM |
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1. RB in NYC (Now Semi-Retired from BBTF) Posted: July 14, 2012 at 09:27 AM (#4182338)If you have to ask....
I have not met a Yankee fan since the mid-90s who wouldn't predict the Yankees would be in 1st place at all critical junctures. It's expected. It's the essence of being a Yankee fan. If you ain't first, you're last.
This is revisionist history, I think. I recall a lot of people being skeptical about Pineda, and having questions as to whether he would make the five man. Certainly not a "big stud" view. It helps when you have the equivalent of the "Naked Gun" TV booth competing for the rotation: Sabathia, Kuroda, Nova, Garcia, Hughes, Pineda, Pettitte, and Dr. Joyce Brothers.
I would have guessed that Chamberlain hadn't had a good year since his first full season, but it turns out his ERA+ was 154 last year--but in only 28 2/3 innings. Still, come on. If the Yankees want middle relief help, they can just go get someone else's closer.
NOW, Barra is finally understanding what it is to be a Yankee fan.
Still, being a league average shortstop at his age is pretty ####### impressive. He can't catch Wagner, but if he can eke out a few more league average years at the tail end you can probably start making a very convincing argument for him over the other great shortstops in baseball history.
I would like to meet the guy who thought that the Yankees would fall apart without Mariano Rivera and with Robertson and Soriano as options. Though it would be OK to worry about the postseason closing role. Just dumb to think they would be in trouble in the regular season from that.
meanwhile, this arguably deserves its own thread:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/nyregion/pete-caldera-46-yankees-reporter-and-sinatra-crooner.html?_r=2&smid=fb-share
Well, I'll admit you'd have to discount the defense to a significant degree, but you wouldn't have to ignore it. Jeter is/was the better offensive player, but your point is taken about the large gap in their statistically measured defense.
You have to be a great player to be in those comparisons, but Jeter is simply not a better ballplayer than those guys. He's a great ballplayer with unique career circumstances. If you like, the Nolan Ryan of shortstops – an amazing and definitely HOF-worthy career, but to see him as the second-best at his position ever is not really tenable.
I don't see him making up any ground on anyone in this race. Being league average helps the career numbers, but isn't going to improve his standing among the greats. He's already in the middle grouping of top ten of all time, not really sure he has any chance to gain on Ripken, Wagner or Vaughan.
Rusty Staub was not close to being a Hall of Famer, Hughie Jennings is clearly a deserving HoFer. We need to balance peak and career.
No, there was no doubt that he was going to be in the rotation, if anything it was maybe the question of if it was Hughes or Garcia, but I think there was just as little doubt that Hughes would make it, both of them clearly had a leg up on Garcia, and Pettitte wasn't even in the picture at the time. I don't think people were saying that he was a "big stud," but certainly a no. 5 at the least.
Sorry to be "that guy," but this is an outdated view of how the Yankees do things, certainly not when Cashman is allowed to have his druthers, and when the Yankees do go on a spending binge, at any given time there are 3 or 4 other teams who are willing to do close to the same.
I don't know, does signing the AL saves leader to be the 8th inning guy in January of last year count as "outdated?" That was the last time the Yankees went out and deliberately targeted relief help, wasn't it? I certainly didn't mean that they go get a new closer every year, but Soriano was not long ago. Maybe to a Yankees fan used to expecting immediate results, that's outdated. I've never rooted for a team with deep pockets or a perpetually short time horizon, so Soriano would still count as recent in my worldview.
I don't think these losses are anything horrifyingly unusual. Red Sox lost Ellsbury and Bailey, Evan Longoria's played in 23 games, etc.
ZiPS for one, just thought Pineda would be *OK* in Yankee Stadium, had already cut his innings way down, and the final projection for the Yankees going into the season was 93-69, with a 48% chance to win the division. Maybe ZiPS was too optimistic about the Yankees going in and the Yankees have just been more fortunate, but is thinking they'd be in first actually *crazy*.
--flies in the face of how he has been perceived by his peers/other baseball people his entire career
--that in his career he was and is one of the smartest players in baseball
--he was in the center of the action of what could easily be argued was the best team in baseball over the past 15 years
--he's still playing an every day ss at age 38 and he's not embarrassing himself by any stretch. there are no willie mays moments here
i want to believe in the metrics. and i understand the origins of how jeter is assessed
but i think jeter and the metrics clash and we are missing something
Peak value matters. No one knows this better than Jeter. To get a full measure of his career, I think you also have to look at the number of women that Jeter dated when they were at peak value: Carey, Lima, Guerra, Alba, Biel, Brewster, Kelly. That seems to me to be prima facie evidence of his range and good hands. Combine that with the World Series rings, the 3200 hits and the 5 gold gloves, and you're talking inner circle HOF.
I do think that the non-Sabermetric consensus will have Jeter as the 2nd best shortstop of all time. The signature plays (The Flip, The Dive), the Gold Gloves, and all the long throws from deep in the hole are what most people will take note of with respect to his defense, not defensive statistics that are regarded as esoteric by all but the baseball statistics cognoscenti. I guess we'll see in 7 or 8 years, when the HOF vote comes in. While percentages have fluctuated over time, Ripken falls into the loftier percentages some more recent first-year inductees have received. I think Jeter will eclipse Ripken's 98.5%, and I would argue that's a reasonable way to judge where Jeter is perceived to rank among shortstops.
The problem is that his range is not good. I think people who say the metrics are wrong are interpreting "sucks" as being Gary Sheffield at shortstop, kicking the ball around, airmailing throws to first base, etc...The inability to get a ground ball that is more than a few steps away is a big part of being a shortstop. It doesn't look bad when it just bounces into centerfield "it's a clean single for Ortiz" but it is as important as booting a ground ball.
If Derek Jeter's defense were an offensive player it would be Jeff Francoeur. He looks great out there, every movement looks practiced and smooth and the swing is beautiful. If he gets a pitch in the middle of the strike zone he hits it 450 feet. The problem is pitches are often in the dirt or at his eyes and swinging at those leaves him hitting .230. Jeter's defense is the equivalent of a hitter who looks good but hits .230.
All that said, the variance between a great defender and a poor one is smaller than the variance in hitters. Jeter is unquestionably (in my opinion) a top five shortstop all time. His contributions certainly put him there. I don't think it's any more unreasonable to say Derek Jeter is a highly valuable shortstop who happens to be bad at defense any more than it is to say that Ozzie Smith was a highly valuable shortstop who had no power (Tom Niedenfeur pitches notwithstanding).
And to respond to 18, Jeter may well be a very lousy defender, and it may not necessarily be that the metrics aren't that misleading, but more importantly - who cares? Is he not still a great player? To say that he has 3,200 hits and counting as a continuously productive shortstop and that yet that doesn't rank him as at least the top 10 or 15 shortstops of all time is just stupid - I love sabermetrics, love them to death, but when you start to talk about "greatest," if you're choosing to use vague words like that, I think it's a huge mistake to add up WAR totals and leave it at that. As an influential player, as a famous player, as the center of famous teams, as an era-defining player, and as a damn good hitter, Jeter deserves 10-15 at least. I don't think you should be afraid of legends, even when the stats show some blemishes. The blemishes are interesting and should be pointed out, but a player's place in a history - how they're viewed by baseball culture - shouldn't be tarnished because it turns out that according to how we often now rank players, they aren't as good as history thought they were.
i agree that jeter has had his defensive limitations. i would assess him over the course of his career as below average because of the range.
but that isn't horrible
and i reiterate you cannot underestimate intelligence in the middle of the field.
betancourt is my idea of a guy who is a horrible shortstop and it's unfathomable to me why major league clubs keep running him out there. not to mention he is a head case and doesn't give consistent effort. and that is being kind.
Or who thought that Eppley and Rapada would have any problem filling those innings
Fans tend to be optimistic until given a reason to change their minds. This is not limited to Yankee fans. Look at the pre-season predictions/posts. Or the Johnny Spreadsheet types consistently suggesting their team is actually better than its poor record.
I think the surprise isn't the Yanks record but that the other AL East contenders have played below expectations.
By this, I am thinking reasonably informed fans/media who care enough to at least think about baseball history. The kind of thinking that leads to the MLB All-Century Team, or the 1976 Topps Sporting News All-Time All-Stars (connected to pro baseball's centennial, I believe). It will be Wagner first, then Jeter.
Seriously, anyone who is fighting the notion that Jeter is a top five all-time shortstop is missing the big picture. He's a guy you want to be sure your kids see play baseball, so they can tell their kids. He may well be THE guy like that right now. And I'm saying this as someone who has never been annoyed by anything more, in baseball, than Jeter's "move my penis out of the way" thing on any pitch that is at all inside.
1. Cal Ripken Jr., 669,033
2. Ernie Banks, 598,168
3. Ozzie Smith, 589,025
4. Honus Wagner, 526,740
Guh? I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but I'm telling my kids how Albert Pujols made me a fan of baseball, literally overnight.
My assumption is that you are being intentionally dense (in order to be contrary) in your ability to read "a guy" and "may well be THE guy" and think I mean that excludes Pujols. But I'll play along. Pujols is another person that comes to mind, of course. There is also a chance that Pujols is Jimmie Foxx--which is a pretty great thing to be, but it's not what we hope for from him. If he is Jimmie Foxx and more or less done building a HOF resume before 35, congratulations on seeing him earlier and becoming a baseball fan. Welcome, and I hope the game brings you great joy.
I want my sons to see Aroldis Chapman, R.A. Dickey, Billy Hamilton, etc. But I think the "must take your kids to see list," the checklist is:
- Future Hall of Famer
- Is the guy that the other dads are pointing out to their sons
- Will likely be talked about and revered for many years to come
- Plays the game "the way it's meant to be played"...
- ...yet plays the game with signature aplomb
I think bonus points for handling self with dignity (which would kick Babe Ruth out, so that's probably a bad criterion), and being primarily identified with one team. I would say that Pujols has tarnished his legacy with the move to the Angels, but I don't blame him for it. Legacies don't buy private jets.
So who will people really boast about seeing play live? Could someday be Verlander, Trout, Harper, Ellsbury, but if you look at HOF eligibles, will significant numbers of people really brag 30-40 years from now about having the chance to see A-Rod, or Roy Halladay, or Jim Thome play? I think the short list is Ichiro, Jeter, and Pujols. It's hard to say how we'll view steroids in years to come-maybe I am wrong about A-Rod.
Of course we don't know how much the injuries sapped Larkin's talent and performance. From ages 24-35 (12 seasons but only about 10 seasons worth of PA), Larkin had 61 WAR. But he added very little outside of that window (which could be normal decline or could be faster than normal due to the accumulative effects of injury). Anyway, a truly durable Larkin is probably substantially better than Jeter.
Can we all agree to stop saying "league average," and just cut it down to "average?"
I can support this but it's a funny thing for me. When I hear "average SS" I immediately think we're talking defense; when I hear "league average" I immediately think we're talking overall.
I keep meaning to trademark my longtime description of Jeter as "gracefully slow."
He LOOKS like he's a pretty good defensive player, even though he generally hasn't been.
If the same ball is hit to five MLB SSs, the other four are liable to reaction a fraction of a second (or a whole second?) quicker toward the ball. That's why they get to the same ball that goes pastadivingJeter.
I think Harvey's list reasonably states the case as to why it's difficult to believe Jeter is a bad defensive SS. I would say that it's possible that the Yankees have had such good starting pitching over that span - many of them with good K ability and/or fly ball tendencies that lessens Jeter damage - and enough good, expensive bats that this overcomes Jeter's shortcomings.
As to where Jeter ranks overall, I'm still shrugging. It's a tough call.
That wouldn't surprise me at all. I'd bet about half that group won't even have heard of Arky Vaughan.
The Arky Vaughan who never played 100 games at shortstop after age 28? There is a reason that his name doesn't come up in those conversations.
Click here, all star first inning highlight. Not Ms Albright
Go to the 42 second mark and watch the "phenomenal" play by Jeter. It's literally 4 baby steps to his right that he barely gets to, makes his stupid ass hop throw... and they act like it could have been a great play. It was a play a 12 year old makes that Jeter couldn't get his reaction time to the point to field the ball without ranging deep in the hole.
I'm sorry, but anyone who watches Jeter in the field and is being honest, knows his defense is horrendous. It doesn't require advanced metrics to see what is right in front of you.
I was going to say a 12 year old with a strong arm but decided against it. I know at 12 years old I would have had that ball, because unlike Jeter, I was taught you don't range backwards to field a ball....and my reaction time would have been measured using the decimal on the stop watch, instead of just raw seconds like Jeters. Of course growing up, I would have probably needlessly dived for the ball and I didn't have the arm to make it in that case. :)
It's baffling how people can watch a play like that and still think that Jeter is a capable major league defensive shortstop. Of course Joe Buck watched it and called it phenomenal....let's hope he was just juicing the talk up for excitement and not that he actually thought that was a good play or an example of range. (I know New Yorkers don't have a good comp to use as a comparison for range, as even Rey Ordonez range was slightly above average, but massively overrated by the New York media)
I'll give you the brains part, he's a baseball general and is aware of the diamond, but his reactions and range is non-existent.
My bar opens tomorrow at the regular time.
When I coached Little League, I had a 9 year old on one of my teams who made that play.
I'll admit I was shocked, but I did see him range to his right, grab the ball in the hole, and get a jump-throw off to nip the runner at 1b.
Don't know what happened to that kid, but I've always assumed he played enough other sports to never really get good at any one of them, and probably doesn't play at all now.
If we didn't have Yankee Clapper and SteveF putting forward the argument that he was the best shortstop OF ALL TIME, there would be a lot less harping on Jeter's poor defense.** I know that fans of Jeter like rconn in #41 get pissed off that every discussion of Jeter has to include so many comments on the only thing in baseball that Jeter wasn't really great at. If I were a Jeter fan, I'd want to make lots of ocmments about all the things he was great at to even it out. It's understandable. I just think it's also understandable that when YC and his ilk start making the argument that Jeter was better than Cal Ripken and Arky Vaughan, Jeter's defense becomes a central topic of conversation.
**To be fair, yeah, there would still be some harping anyway.
I really wish people would stop with this already. Jeter did not invent the jump throw, and he is not the only major league SS, past, present, or future, who uses it. He might like it a little too much for his own good, but that's another matter. OTOH, he made a play in the hole the other night by planting his right foot and throwing in the more conventional manner.
Also, on a LL field, that ASG ball isn't even hit to the shortstop -- it's past the third baseman before any fielder moves a muscle.
The jump throw is a perfectly normal and useful baseball play. The issue is that the jump throw is a play you only should use when you're not able to range behind the ball before you play it. Jeter's use of the jump throw, especially during the bad years earlier in the last decade, demonstrated his relative lack of range.
It is kind of amazing how Jeter re-made himself into a better defensive player in his 30s. There were a lot of stories about his new workouts and his recognition that he needed to improve his defense. I think it's pretty cool that he pulled it off - speaks both to his work ethic and to his baseball intelligence.
Larry Bowa was very fond of that throw on Astroturf fields, where ground balls accelerated into the hole in a hurry. Bowa didn't do the full leap into the air like Brad Pitt as Achilles, but he would spring back on the balls of his feet and sort of hop forward with both feet, while heaving the ball to first base. Didn't always work, but it was his best chance at a play.
By basically every viable metric we have, Alex Rodriguez is having a better year than Derek Jeter.
I'm not aware of anyone claiming Jeter should be ranked higher than Wagner, and I haven't made that claim, although I probably remarked that Jeter was likely to end up with more hits. The fact is that the folks low balling Jeter's performance now have (mostly) done so from the days of Olde Primer, saying he wasn't that good, didn't deserve to be an All-Star, wasn't really a full-fledged member of the "Holy Trinity" of AL shortstops, wouldn't be a Hall of Famer, wouldn't be a 1st ballot Hall of Famer - retreating hill by hill as Jeter's performance proved them wrong. There are plenty of folks outside of BBTF that rank Jeter in the top 5 shortstops of all time, some have him ahead of Ripken & Vaughan (who had an awfully short career to be ranked that high). Most of the folks carping about Jeter would not be doing so if he wore another team's uniform, IMHO.
His point is? A-rod is two years younger and paid twice as much and we're supposed to be give him credit for outpacing an old SS by half a win?
a baseball world where joe sheehan is marginalized and eventually ignored is a better place
Who are these folks? I can't say I've ever met them, either at Ye Olde Primer or the modernized production facility of baseball thinking it became.
I think Jeter's a top 10 shortstop all time. I wish that were enough for his fans.
Vaughan didn't play 100 games at SS after age 28 and his career was essentially over after his age 31 season. Ripken had a 97 OPS+ after age 30. Reason enough that their rankings are not unassailable if measuring careers at SS. It is hardly "settled science" that Ripken and Vaughan will rank above Jeter, who may not be done putting up 200+ hit seasons.
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