With Derek Jeter splitting the day between the doctor’s office and his home in Manhattan, there were hopes among all the remaining Yankees that they might raise their game to compensate for the loss of their captain. But, if anything, they lowered their performance.
Almost all the Yankees’ remaining high-paid star hitters, including supertsr Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson, Nick Swisher and the storied team’s other iconic player Alex Rodriguez, continued to struggle and in some cases looked even worse, as the Tigers, behind Anibal Sanchez’s dominance, went up two games to none in the ALCS.
The Yankees find themselves in a massive hole after losing two straight games at home and also their beloved captain, and now they must find a way to break through against baseball’s best and hottest pitcher, Justin Verlander in Game 3 at Detroit. Judging by how they were flummoxed by Sanchez in the 3-0 defeat (and really this whole postseason), the Yankees’ chances don’t look especially promising against the overpowering, unshakeable Verlander back in Detroit.
...There are culprits everywhere, not just A-Rod. Cano is in an historic hitting slump. Cano made it 0-for-his-last-26 this postseason, a major-league for ineptitude in one postseason.
It’s hard to believe Cano’s hitting is actually slightly worse than that of Alex Rodriguez, Granderson and Swisher, the black hole (Nos. 6 through 8) in a reconfigured Yankees lineup to accommodate the loss of Jeter and everyone’s varying degrees of struggle. A-Rod went 1 for 4 with two strikeouts, the hitting coming against Coke after he went 0-for-3 against the righthander Sanchez. It’ll be interesting to see whether A-Rod, now 0 for 18 with 12 strikeouts vs. right-handers in the playoffs, stays in the lineup vs. Verlander; since he was 4 for 6 with two home runs against Verlander in 2012, the guess is yes.
Repoz
Posted: October 14, 2012 at 07:58 PM |
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Russell Martin had that homer in Game One of the ALDS, but he's been .174/.240/.217 since then.
Rodriguez, Cano, Granderson, Swisher, Martin and Chavez have combined for a .118/.185/.188 line this postseason over 157 PAs.
The team minus Jeter has hit .190/.266/.312. Take out Ibanez, too, and it's .172/.242/.256.
If they had hit just "badly", they would probably be up 2-0 now after sweeping the ALDS.
That ain't the world we live in, though.
Wasn't there a discussion just recently on this board about how infuriatingly streaky Cano can be? Maybe I'm misremembering, I don't follow NY that closely. But if that is the case, then unfortunately for NY his flat patch has come at a bad time.
Also, I don't recall Jeter doing any special in the 9th inning or later of game 1....
Russell Martin had that homer in Game One of the ALDS, but he's been .174/.240/.217 since then.
Rodriguez, Cano, Granderson, Swisher, Martin and Chavez have combined for a .118/.185/.188 line this postseason over 157 PAs.
The team minus Jeter has hit .190/.266/.312. Take out Ibanez, too, and it's .172/.242/.256.
If they had hit just "badly", they would probably be up 2-0 now after sweeping the ALDS.
How long before rumors of THE BIG FIX start spreading?
A very, very, very long time.
Yeah, just before his season ending rampage he'd been in a nearly month long funk where he'd gone .204 / .297 / .347 / .644. He's gone into more than one streak like that, usually coinciding with his seeming desire to pull every pitch. That Yankee Stadium short porch is kind of like Homer Simpson's alcohol to a lot of the Yanks' lefthanded sluggers; sometimes it's the solution but almost as often it can be a big, big problem.
Not really. The O's put up an OPS in the ALDS that was 230 points below their season OPS. The Yankees were 180 points below their season OPS. The O's underperformed by more (and that's not even accounting for the fact that they got to face Phil Hughes).
"On a tear" really understates it. Over that Yankees' last nine games, Cano hit .615/.628/1.026. He had at least two hits in each of the nine games, and finished the regular season on a 24-for-39 streak.
I mean, of course. Also, the sky is often blue and gravity pulls us towards the floor. This Yankee team has been making guys like Anibal Sanchez and Fister look like all-time greats. It doesn't look good for the rest of the series.
But there's a day off, and a change of scenery. If this team chooses to hit like this, the series will be over soon enough. But there's nothing preventing them from getting to Verlander; he's not that good.
Considering the Orioles ended the regular season with a +7 run differential, let's be honest, any "underperforming" they did was just coming back down to earth.
I have often thought the same with postseason hockey. How can a eighth place seed beat the number one seed when that number one team beat them in the regular season consistently? Well unlike the regular season where a team plays Pittsburgh tonight, in Buffalo two nights later and then home to Toronto after that etc. they can establish a plan of defense or offense against a player or team for the next 4- 7 games. I think this was part of New Jersey's success this last post season.
"Baseball players can hit anything in 40 PAs. Film at 11."
Yes, but it's just a fluke, so there's no sense harping on it or trying to read too much into it. (Hello, ARod.)
I don't know, take away that little league right field porch and they'd never score.
Desperate Yankee fan clutches at straws: Verlander's game scores against the Yanks this year are 73, 44, and 39. Of course that was when The Bambino wasn't on crutches and the rest of the team wasn't channeling Max Patkin, but ya gotta keep the old chin up and never get downhearted.
He enjoys it for all the stupid people he sees and gets to lord over.
I find it extremely interesting. What I don't find interesting is the silliness of ascribing character traits to players, labeling them heros or goats, based on what they do in a small sample of PAs or IP (ARod vs. Ibanez). Or the silliness of being confused or surprised that a player is 2-32 or whatever (Cano). This is baseball.
The way they're hitting right now? Verlander and Scherzer no-hit them consecutively and they go home. But this lineup can hit anywhere, and hit anyone, Jeter or no Jeter.
When something weird happens like Ibanez being the mega-clutch guy more than once, isn't that interesting and fun to watch? Your outlook on baseball, at least the way that you advertise it on this site, seems to be so aggressively logical that we wonder if you ever enjoy a game. Every game is just an amalgamation of small sample sizes. Every year is an amalgamation of small samples.
Everyone on this site is smart enough to know that Robinson Cano can hit .700 for one week and then .050 the next week, and know that it has nothing to do with his true talent level, his projection for tomorrow, or his manliness. But the difference in those two weeks is still interesting to watch, and it's worth talking about.
Hell, at this point, I think I'd actually be relieved to learn that entire team was on the take ...
The Yanks certainly aren't worse off than they were going into Game 3 of the 1996 World Series, and that turned out pretty well. Not saying it'll be easy, but Verlander is 5-4 with a 3.74 ERA against the Yankees for his career. There is a game that can be won on Tuesday.
No, but I confess I don't have a lot of patience for people who have been watching baseball for 10, 20, 50 years and still don't understand what they are seeing. Which includes most sportsrwiters, and several people who post here. Players do not choke in the postseason. They do not "rise" to the occasion. They play exactly the same in the postseason as in any small sample of PA or IP in the regular season. That people don't understand this is ridiculous. The insane postseason Bonds had should have clued people in to this, but it didn't. And it is particularly absurd as applied to ARod, a player who had an all-time great postseason in 2009, a postseason performance that should have erased any doubt people had in their minds as to whether he is a choker in the postseason, but instead these same people are back believing that he can't handle the pressure.
Even assuming arguendo there are a small number of players who might actually choke in the postseason, ARod can't be one of them.
And sometimes they are. I thought it took a lot of something for the Tigers to hang in there last night, after Valverde they had to be pretty deflated. Every Braves team I ever followed would have folded the tent and gone home for the night.
I want to believe in the Tooth Fairy. But I don't, because that would be silly.
The fact that the Tigers didn't just fold the tent should have told you that major leaguers don't do that. Instead, you took the wrong lesson, and concluded that some major leaguers do but others don't.
Or, as Delmon Young said about the Yankees tying the game at 4-4, when the post-game interviewer asked him how the Tigers overcame that:
<scoff> "We're major leaguers. It's our job."
I've watched all seven of the Tigers games this postseason and they've got this Team of Destiny vibe to them right now. The pitching, Valverde meltdowns aside, has been very good, if not aided by two VERY aggressive teams in Oakland and New York. And the offense has been timely, but not particularly imposing. Cabrera and Fielder haven't exactly mashed, but it seems like the Tigers are catching a lot of breaks that eventual-WS winners rack up in October. They had one non-fluke run in the first three games of the Oakland series, and were aided by wild pitches and hit batters in the clincher. And then today, you had them getting their first run thanks to Cano's bobble and the other two following one of the shittier calls we've seen in this postseason.
But wins are wins, and right now, Detroit is getting them. Outside of last night's ninth inning, the Yankees have just looked like a totally defeated team in the first two games. The at-bats are just shockingly bad. Few hitter counts, piles of strikeouts, and weak contact when the ball gets put into play. Detroit pitching is good, but the Yankees are making them looking Johnson-Schilling right now.
where's Jim Leyritz when you need him
It's silly to apply any sort of moral character traits to players in a slump or on a hot streak. I'ts not silly to recognize that human beings can be conscious of slumps and overreact to their situation, and sometimes make matters worse for themselves.
Of course in the long run they'll level off and eventually return to their true talent level (at least until age or injuries catch up to them), but the idea that players are some sort of automatons who can't ever be adversely affected by negative emotions is the silliest idea of all.
The Yanks have probably decided that they need to get down 0-3 and come stormin' back like those '04 Red Sox. It's one of the few things they haven't yet managed to do in their storied career, and this looks like their best shot at it. They'll need a rainout in there somewhere, however, to get CC an extra start.
Yes, it is.
Of course, you're the one treating them as automatons. "ARod is hitting badly and it's the postseason; so of course he's choking."
Sorry, that doesn't make sense.
Yes, it is.
I was with you until this, Ray. I don't think that Cano's 0-25 means anything other than that he went 0-25 at a less than ideal time, or that A-Rod went from being a choker to being a clutch god to back to being a choker. I think trying to read anything into a postseason's worth of events is foolish.
That said, no matter how much of a professional one might be, no one is in a perfect state of mind at all times. To say that it's silly to think that a human being might get frustrated and respond to even short-term failure by altering their behavior (intentionally or not) in a way which may or may not actually be productive is an idea that strikes me as, well, silly. You can see this clearly enough in players like Knoblauch or Ankiel. I think it's as silly to pretend that such things can't happen in a less disastrous fashion to just about any player as it is to think that we can generally identify when it's happening over 1, or 20, or 100 at bats.
Tigers pitching has been absolutely FEASTING on lefties in the first two series because they keep getting that outside "corner."
as hard as it is the fan needs to be supportive in this situation
separate note: granderson needs to sit. fella is lost
So the girls have learned to read? ;-)
separate note: granderson needs to sit. fella is lost
Not sure I agree with this. Although he's struggling, in a well pitched series like this I want guys in the lineup who can run into one. A solo homer like he hit in game 5 of the alds would have been a big deal in either of the first two games. Even a struggling Grando might crack one when you least expect it.
-Robinson Cano and Nick Swisher will clearly be fine. They're putting in their at-bats, working the pitch count, they're not looking stupid against bad pitches. They're doing just fine. (Swisher seems a mess in the field, but that looks more like his typical problems of non-chalanting plays that require 100% effort rather than stress or worry.)
-Raul Ibanez is just a guy having a hot streak. It's really cool, or would be if he weren't a Yankee.
-Curtis Granderson, I'm not sure. I watched him down the stretch, since he was on my fantasy team, and I'm a little worried he's hurt. He looks just a bit slow at the plate, like his timing is off for some organic reason. That could just be a slump and perhaps some pressing on top of the slump, and I'd probably bet on him turning it around if it's 50/50 odds.
-Mark Teixeira appears to have declined in real talent since 2009, but he's hitting just like normal 2012 Mark Teixeira.
-Alex Rodriguez, like Granderson, actually looks bad up there. He can't get around on good fastballs, and he's guessing. He keeps guessing wrong. I expect he'll guess right eventually and get into one, but I don't expect ARod to contribute significantly to the Yankees this postseason. He's not right.
On a defensive shift (I'm paraphrasing). "See that hit by Texeireia? A bunch of geniuses decided that we need to shift infielders, but that would have been an easy out if the 2b had been in hist normal position".
On the milestone HR clauses in A-Rod's contract "Derek Jeter never would have asked for those".
What a pompous ass. I don't remember him being this bad before, but I've had to actually turn the channel a few times because I couldn't find the mute button on my remote quickly enough.
Its hard to imagine how its possible, but I really feel for ARod, millions and all. The amount of abuse that man takes is staggering.
Tigers pitching has been absolutely FEASTING on lefties in the first two series because they keep getting that outside "corner."
I haven't said much about the strike zone because I've almost been numbed by it, but from game 1 of the Yanks-O's DS right up through yesterday, this has been the worst called strike zone I've seen in my life. I wouldn't say it's just the Tigers pitchers who've benefited by it, though.
In fact it's been so bad, with about one borderline "strike" out of four showing up completely outside the zone, that I'm almost wondering if the TBS strike zone monitor is out of whack.** This AL postseason has been Exhibits A through J of the need to crack down on "personalized" strike zones and install a roboump to call the balls and strikes. The strike zone in these last two series*** has made me wonder whether I fell into a time machine that's been set at 1968.
**Except that it hasn't just been on the corners or at the bottom of the zone, it's been everywhere. In one of Jeter's last appearances before he crashed, the first pitch was right down the middle, nearly halfway between the midpoint and the top of the zone. Ball one. The next pitch showed a gap of a good ball width below the bottom of the zone. Strike one. But I guess that hitters are supposed to be able to "adjust" to that.
***Can't comment on the Tigers-A's series, since I didn't watch much of that one.
In the real world, it's actually a series of pitches thrown by a pitcher who will has a plan of attack to try to get the hitter out. The pitcher may have better control of certain pitches on a certain day or inning and that may alter his approach. The batter has a strategy too. He may be guessing, or sitting on a particular pitch, or trying to read a giveaway in the pitchers motion. The batter may feel weak or tired or be injured in some way or be in a mental state that is making it more difficult to focus on each pitch fully. If the batter doesn't swing, the balls and strikes are called by a human umpire who could be experiencing any or all of the same mental or physical ailments or could just hold a grudge against a particular player.
That is what baseball is, and no matter how good our projections are, they will simply be just a model of the batter's chances on a certain pitch thrown by a certain pitcher in a certain ballpark in a certain inning on a certain day.
There is obviously a huge amount of randomness that players and managers and announcers and sportswriters and fans may wrongly identify as meaningful, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
The crazy thing is that the TBS television crew is providing probably the best playoff announcing of the last decade. It's a low bar, admittedly, but they're crossing it with ease. Johnson is a professional with a good voice, Smoltz and Darling both have a lot of good stuff to say, the group has good chemistry (probably greatly due to Johnson's work), and they remain focused on the game on the field.
Replacing them with Sutcliffe is arguably an act of war against the nation of Canada.
I really haven't seen a problem with the strike zone this playoffs. There are missed calls, especially on breaking balls that drop through the zone and are caught below the knees, but the rate has been pretty normal. There haven't been any egregiously shifting zones, and I only saw one ludicrously wide zone (Joyce) and I haven't seen any ludicrously short zones (the high strike has been mostly well called).
TBS's zone graphic is significantly skinnier than the zones used by AtBat and BrooksBaseball and the rest. It's the same underlying data, but TBS' graphic cuts off areas that are displayed on the outside or inside corners in other graphics. On the balls that appear just off the plate on TBS, they're considered borderline in most strike zone graphics.
That makes me feel a bit better, but how does one know which networks use which zones? Since this isn't the sort of thing that's normally on one's checklist of things to listen for, is there a place where they list this sort of information?
Ray, have you ever played competitive sports? I have. The moment impacts your mind. Some people are too dumb to understand the moment and some people can overcome the nerves, but if you don't think nerves are there even for pro athletes, you've got no clue what you're talking about.
The idea that the set of pro athletes is a group that has had that process self-selected away is foolish.
The critical observation is that most elite athletes understand the moment and it impacts their state of mind and nervousness. Practically all of them admit it, though perhaps not in baseball. Golfers do. Read what they say.
There's no pressure in the minors comparable to a major league postseason. There are no "moments" in the minors.(*) You can't replicate the conditions of a Super Bowl or a three-foot putt on 18 to win the Masters, or a big at-bat in a major league postseason game. It can't be done.
This is one of those over-intellectualized observations that smart baseball watchers come up with, but it has little basis in reality.
(*) And no way for things that seem like "moments" to weed people out. You think Profar is going to be "weeded out" if he goes 1-14 in the Sally League playoffs?
But regardless, I'm not saying that every plate appearance is a perfectly discrete event governed by probabilities. I'm saying that we should be careful of attributing characteristics we recognize in ourselves fully to baseball players. They are different from you and me.
Read what pro golfers say. I guess it's against code for MLBers to tell reporters they feel the moment, but pro golfers have no such reluctance.
The guys on the PGA Tour aren't there instead of me because they're better at dealing with pressure; they're there because they're better players.
Similarly, A-Rod isn't a major league star because of the way he deals with pressure; he's there because he's a phenomenal baseball player.
Can't be done. Those moments impact even elite athletes and dramatically affect their performance.(*)
Those moments are so infrequent as to be useless in weeding people out. You can suck in the postseason and still be a useful, indeed very good, player, as several Yankees are showing.
(*) There likely are players who feel pressure in spots other than those, but in baseball, the effect gets swallowed up by aggregation.
there are numerous stories of pga players who could still make a comfortable living on the tour but could no longer win because they got the 'yips' while putting on the final day of a tournament. one of the more famous examples is tom watson.
just saying.....
And he'll call upcoming pitches, and the safest place in the world to be is in the quadrant of the strike zone in which he thinks the pitcher is going to aim next. He does it about once an inning, and I don't think he's been right yet.
There are a bunch of those guys. Still very good, just not as good as they could be but for the nerves.
Golf is a very similar sport to baseball, and it's certain there are baseball players making big money in the major leagues who get the yips. And whose swing gets a bit out of whack, particularly under pressure, and it takes them forever to get it back. By the time forever passes in baseball, the postseason is over.
Tom Watson was supposed to be Nicklaus' successor but Nicklaus kept on winning. There were a lot of theories invented to explain that fact, but they come down to the fact that Nicklaus is one of the 2-3 greatest golfers ever, probably the greatest golfer ever, and Watson was one of the 10 greatest golfers ever. You don't need a lot of ######## psychoanalysis beyond that. It's like saying Tom Glavine wasn't as good as Greg Maddux because he was afraid of spiders. Tom Glavine wasn't as good as Greg Maddux cause almost nobody is as good as Greg Maddux; it doesn't demand explanation.
If Ernie Johnson can keep Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith on topic, handling Smoltz and Darling should be a breeze.
I think Smoltz could be really, really good with experience but he doesn't do a ton of games and is always in a three man booth.
please look up tom watson. watson is well known around the tour for having developed putting issues. john feinstein wrote about it in one of his books on golf
i did not make this up or pull it out of thin air. tom watson has spoken about this and how it affected his career.
early 40's is considered the end of the career bell curve
It's literally nothing like Glavine, Maddux, and spiders. Watson lost the ability to make short putts at a relatively early age and it kept him from winning as much as he would have. He was only 34 when he won his last major.
As Harvey noted, Watson freely acknowledges this. Golfers have no compunction in doing this; baseball players do.
They have had that process selected away, to a significant degree. If you are affected very badly by pressure, by previous failure, by "the moment", you're not going to get through the minors. This isn't to say that ballplayers are as such automatons - I thin DKDC articulated well the realia of baseball, and "less affected" by pressure isn't "not affected" - but we shouldn't assume they're just like us in respect to pressure and the mental game. They're most of them freaks.
This is the best answer yet to the "choke"** accusation, but all it means is that most Major Leaguers are better at blocking out environmental factors than most players who never make it to The Show. It doesn't mean that all Major Leaguers can always block out these environmental factors, it just means that they're more likely than not to keep their composure in pressure-packed moments.
**Meaning underperformance due in part to felt mental stress, not any underlying "character" issue. Part of the problem is so many of these discussions is the conflation of stress issues with "character" issues, when one has nothing to do with the other.
And before Watson, there was Arnold Palmer, whose legendary failures in his putting game after he won his last Major practically made "the yips" a household expression all by itself.
I find it best to just ignore the pitch zone thing when I'm watching a game. The TBS one was clearly skinnier from the get-go and I like to think I've seen enough baseball games to know when I should be outraged by a call based on live-action and replays. It's useful information to have when following online, but I don't see the point for a game where I can see the pitch.
(*) Take the serene and knowing confidence Tiger fans had when A-Rod was up against Valverde with 2 outs in the 9th inning of Game 5 2011 ALDS. Multiply it by 100. That's how unlikely Watson was to make that putt.
Keeping one's cool under pressure is a skill, it's a real skill that people see in real life all the time. I'm a chef and it's a critical skill in our business and certainly one that people do not share equally.
There is no skill on earth that all major league players have equally. None. They vary in size, speed, eyesight, intelligence, etc. So I think that it's profoundly illogical to say that all major leaguers share the exact same level of "clutchness."
I will agree that the development process probably weeds out most of the nervous Nellies, and that perhaps the average major leaguer is just as superior in this skill as he is in his athletic skills. But it's still a skill that some players will have more than others.
The problem is that, because of the nature of the game, it's virtually impossible to determine how the players differ in this skill. You need thousands of ABs in the clutch, and we never get them, and even if we did there are the arguments about how to define clutch, define performance, etc. And I agree that short of something outrageous happening (like Ankiel) it is always best to assume that remarkably good or bad clutch performance is just a sample size fluke.
Also, don't forget that whenever a veteran team succeeds in the playoffs, their experience is mentioned. Whenever a young team succeeds, it's because the don't know enough to be nervous.
If so, that's pretty much the opposite of the meaning of the meme. The meme's "honey badger doesn't give a ####\" means that the honey badger doesn't give a #### about you. If you get in the way of the honey badger doing whatever awesome thing the honey badger wants to do, the honey badger will kick your ass, steamroll right through you, and go on to doing the next awesome thing that he wants to do without giving you so much as a second thought. If any Yankee is currently the honey badger, it's Raul Ibanez, not Robinson Cano.
Here is the honey badger not giving a ####.
I remember his reputation, and I have never doubted the power of narratives to obscure reality, even to the participants. But no matter how common the conventional wisdom was, it doesn't match his record. If you take the presumption that you have to explain all of Watson's losses and none of his wins, then you can invent all kinds of explanations about his 8 second-place finishes. But that's not an accurate assumption. His 8--8!--victories in majors count toward his record, too, and have to be explained if you are trying to argue that a major part of his golfing career is explained by an inability to close out.
I believe in both, but the problem is that clutch and anti-clutch have different potentials to affect the game and be noticed. Let's suppose Joe Randa is phenomenally clutch. He's a "true talent" .290/.340/.440 hitter. What's he going to hit in the clutch situations? The theoretical top level is a homerun every time, but no human is capable of that. Maybe his clutch true talent is .320/.370/.480 ... that's not enough to notice through the noise, and indeed given those constant true talent levels he might even hit worse in the clutch over a few hundred ABs. (Also we have all those other issues ... maybe Joe Randa only feels extra pressure when his dad is in the stands, or something)
But let's suppose he's phenomenally anti-clutch. The theoretical bottom is a strikeout every time. That is something that everyone is capable of.
i offered up tom watson as an example of a guy who had the spirit to do the job but by all accounts, including the player himself, his hands would not cooperate. his hands would shake. he would begin sweating. he incorporated every approach available to try and generate the calm he had experienced previously in winning his 8 majors. he was unable, for whatever reason, to get to that 'place'. so despite improving his tee to green game in his late 30's he never won another major after age 34.
and again, the player himself pointed to this problem
if you are going to argue with someone that this is incorrect then argue with tom watson himself because he has discussed it ad nauseum for now what is almost 30 years. but be warned tom has a a temper so if you get a nine iron aside the head when you tell tom he doesn't know that he is misinterpreting his reality don't say you weren't warned.
don't know. for some weird reason i am thinking of the submarine in the hunt for red october that has a reactor incident and just as the sub looks like it will make it the captain is struck on the head and knocked out so the sub team is leaderless and a dire situation becomes hopeless
the yanks are that team. losing their 'captain' just took their chances from something really low to nil
at least if if they keep not hitting.
Oh, baseball is a funny game. I wouldn't be surprised in the least to see an unexpected hero emerge and lead the Yankees forth. Or, not even that. They might just win the rest of the games pretty easily.
which is why i wrote if they keep not hitting. it's really hard to win and not score
unless they changed the rules to help the yanks out and nobody told us.
which is also not out of the realm of possibility
ha, ha.
Can't disagree with that.
you may have just lost your bbtf decoder ring. a true bbtfer argues anything
I'm actually of the mind that this kind of thinking diminishes Jeter. He's had a HOF career, but every time he gets adulation for things that have nothing to do with how good a player he is it forces the Jeter v stat guys debate and takes away from how good a ball player he has been. For all the love Chipper got this year when all is said and done Jeter will probably be within the margin of error of Chipper's WAR total. It's silly that arguments against his greatness have to be made but when someone calls him 'the best Yankee ever' somebody is going to argue against that obvious untruth.
No he doesn't.
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