Keep on growing! Tell the truth!!...I looked away…It’s too late.
Notice that I’ve limited the discussion to Jeter’s offense. One of the great controversies of the sabermetric era is the difference between the mainstream opinion of Jeter’s defense at shortstop, and the numbers he’s produced in every defensive system. Jeter, who has won five Gold Gloves, has consistently been rated below-average—and at times among the worst shortstops in the game—by the credible defensive systems. Whatever his athleticism, he just hasn’t made enough plays relative to his peers to be considered a good defender by the metrics. That continues this season; Derek Jeter rates as the worst defensive shortstop in baseball in both Ultimate Zone Rating (at Fangraphs) and Runs From Fielding (at baseball-reference.com). He was among the worst in those categories last year, too. It’s unusual for 38-year-olds to even play shortstop regularly, but the ones who do are usually strong defenders nearing the end of their career. Jeter is an outlier among this group for not only not being a strong defender, but for his performance at age 38. By Runs From Fielding, Jeter is -17 this year; no 38-year-old has ever been worse than -7. Even with his surge at the plate, Jeter has been worth about two wins more than a replacement-level player because of his terrible range.
There is some statistical fluke in Jeter’s batting line. From 2007 through 2011, as his power faded, Jeter hit home runs on about 10 percent of his fly balls. This year, he’s doubled that figure to 20 percent. Since that is by far a career high, and a number incongruent with everything we know about him as a player, we can surmise that the 12 homers—and the bounce they give to his average and slugging—are less the product of skill than good fortune. They count toward his value, but should be taken with a grain of salt—they don’t represent a flowering of some late-in-life power. Remember, this is a batter who hits the ball on the ground as much as anyone we’ve seen; he’s not a home-run hitter.
Even if you ding Jeter for the defense and the home-run rate, you’re left with a player who has been a positive contributor at an advanced age, someone who may not quite be worth the $15 million he’ll make this season, but who has kept himself from becoming an albatross. Jeter is, at 38, still remarkably athletic. He’s a positive contributor running the bases, he’s exceptionally durable and while he scores poorly on measures of overall defense, he remains a smart player in the middle of the diamond. It wasn’t that long ago that it appeared the Yankees might be stuck with a replacement-level player at shortstop. In 2012, at least, that hasn’t been the case. Jeter’s ability to get the bat to the ball more frequently has given him enough offensive value to make him a good player on one of the game’s best teams.
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PED, QED.
Years ago I thought arguing Pete Rose was bad and there would never be a more controverisal great figure. I never envisioned Bonds and Jeter. Do we have any candidates coming up who might match this level of ubergreat/noheisn't?
How many other ways can I possibly derail the thread?
* Todd Akin started out good but went too far
* Tim Tebow will lead his new team to victories just by being on the bench to encourage others
* Let's all block a planned parenthod clinic by eating Chik Fil A ssandwiches on their sidewalk
* Romney hates all poor and minorities, but Obama hates America
Gotta be the Bayless!
M-O-U-S-E.
He's 4th in the AL in Outs as well, and only 5 behind teammate Ichiro for 3rd!
I for one, admire TomH's bravery.
Vaya con dios!
Rollins did lead the NL in outs in 2007, and is in the lead for his 5th Outs title this season.
I'll agree to post no numbers here. But I do want to address something from one of the recent threads that I didn't get around to doing there: Hate. The idea that criticism is because people like me hate Derek Jeter.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, I think he's been a below average defender at short pretty much his whole career, but that's just saying what I think is obvious. I love Derek Jeter. I enjoy watching him play baseball. Unless he's going against one of the teams I have a strong rooting interest for, I will always root for Jeter. And if the Angels are up 7-2 in the 8th inning, I'll even be happy when Jeter gets a hit against them.
I particularly admire his hustle, and the fact that he's never stopped hustling after playing for 18 years. I'm a few years older than Derek and I know I could not do that. I used to be really fast. Now when I play softball once a week I've got to follow some rules to keep my achilles intact: 1)try to hit the ball in the air every time 2) if it's on the ground, don't go full speed. An infield single is not worth the pain of aggravating my foot problems. In the last year I've had to move from shortstop to first base, the old man position.
He's been able to maintain the same style of play - the stats of 38 year old Jeter are almost interchangeable from those of mid 20's Derek Jeter. He's been a joy to watch and I'll miss him when it's all over. I'm pleased that he was able to turn back the clock this year (really, since mid way through last year).
I rarely manage to see these threads through to the end, but were people really specifically accusing you of being a hater? Because a) I've never gotten that impression, but b) there certainly are a lot of people who do hate Jeter, and c) some of those people are regular posters at BBTF.
"I think he's been a below average defender at short pretty much his whole career" is not hate; "he gives back all of his bat and then some in the field" is.
Is this the definition that is used when talking about what should be done to playas but the not the game (or maybe it's vice versa, I'm not really sure)? Otherwise it's not hate either. I think it's plainly silly. But just because one believes something that I don't doesn't mean that some sinister motivation was involved, otherwise I'd think Ray was the hatingest bastard I'd ever met.
By the way, I agree wholeheartedly with AROM. And I'd love to see Jeter hang around to knock that filthy POS Rose off the all-time hits leaderboard. And that's something, because I'd stack my genuine, no ambiguities hate for the New York Yankees up against anyone's.
Nobody accused me specifically. There was a general comment that seemed to imply that anything negative about Jeter was motivated by Jeter-hate. Or at least that's how I read it.
I disagree with this interpretation and agree wholeheartedly with 10 and 11.
Depends how he does it. If Jeter can be a .300 hitter, and his defense does not degrade from here, or if he becomes the DH and keeps hitting at his 2011-12 level, I'd be happy with that.
But if Jeter turns into a .245 hitter with no power and -30 UZRs, succeeds Joe Girardi as Yankee manager so he can keep writing his own name in the lineup and chase the record, I'd lose a lot of my respect for him. I don't think there's much chance of the Yankees allowing something like that to happen though.
I'd probably prefer that method myself, but that just might be the Yankee hate talking.
He may have been completely unserious. Otherwise I have no idea what he was talking about. I can't find much hate in that thread unless that poster thinks that criticizing Jeter's fielding qualifies as hate.
Who has the most career out titles? Willie Wilson?
Further, GuyM and others believe that the non-PBP defensive stats actually have quite a bit of overlooked utility. They think that Tango's WOWY analysis (adjusting non-PBP defensive stats according to every possible piece of information) provides the best defensive numbers that we've got at the moment.
It is entirely incidental to this that the non-PBP numbers rate Derek Jeter as a historically poor defenisve player. If it were any other player who happened to have such a huge gap between his PBP and non-PBP defensive ratings, GuyM would be talking about him. I think that attributing bias in this situation in entirely unfair. He and others are making a complex, worthwhile, data-driven argument which just happens to have taken Jeter as its focus because he's the most famous player whose evaluation is most affected by this analysis. Dismissing them as "haters" is wrong.
(I am unconvinced by this argument, primarily the part where non-PBP defensive statistics constitute strong evidence of defensive quality.)
Too many people ignore his effort and focus on the limitations. Likewise, too many people ignore his limitations and focus on his effort. IMO, a sizable portion of the people in either camp are doing so out of hate - but not hate of Jeter. They hate the hyperbole of the other camp.
Jeter is a great player. His hitting is the majority of his greatness, and competitive drive is most of the rest. But the final part is that he does all that while playing a competent SS. There are many great hitters in MLB, and most of the ones who are better than Jeter would, if they played SS, likely be far, far worse than Jeter is. That's not a typical comparison to make, but Jeter isn't the typical SS.
Let's see, it looks like Willie Wilson doesn't have any.
Rollins probably has the most! Wow.
The Phillies have been doing great in this category. Doug Glanville led the league twice. Juan Samuel three times, Larry Bowa twice, Cookie Rojas and Tony Taylor once each. 14 times a Phillie has led the league in outs, in the last 50 years.
Also Ruben Sierra three times. Bobby Richardson four times, which makes sense. Four times for Doc Cramer. Three times for Red Schoendienst, Luis Aparicio, Frankie Crosetti, and Ivy Olson, who Wilbert Robinson put in the leadoff spot to make out after out for seven straight years. (or I assume he was in the leadoff spot, BB-ref doesn't have the box scores for the Ivy Olson era).
This is just from scanning the list. I probably missed someone.
Guys with uber-high media profiles always produce some level of backlash. I don't think it's worth quantifying, but it would be interesting to come up with some kind of a "Backlash Index." (Perhaps Backlasher can come out of retirement.) I don't think the backlash for Jeter has really penetrated very far into the MSM, however. For that, one needs a foil, someone like a T.J. Simers to be a lightning rod for one's "inner a-hole" or something. Jeter is fortunate in this regard because there's A-Rod right next to him on the Yankees sucking up most of that bandwidth for him.
It should be noted that Jeter's current offensive shape/value coalesced in the second half of 2011. Uncle Joe is moving kinda slow in getting around to recognizing what happened, but better late than never.
Right you are! It's time for a thread about Ivy Olson!
Maybe “haters” is the wrong term or we have different definitions, but I felt that the term was applied because of the insistence on the rightness of that side’s data as well complete unwillingness to consider alternatives. YMMV and I admit to being biased in my reading of the analysis because I am a Yankee fan (though not much of a Jeter fan). Also, IIRC, someone broached the argument that Prince Fielder would be a better SS than Jeter, so there’s that too.
He would be a more hilarious shortstop. I will go to my grave insisting on that.
In the days of the Trinity, I felt that ARod and Garciaparra were better than Jeter, and that Jeter got a New York bump that overlooked his shortcomings. I've come around on him since then--he is a wonderful player and a team leader, who truly plays the game the way you'd want your kid to, and who handles himself with dignity (and who has sex with a lot of really attractive women). His range is not good, but I think that (similar to what villageidiom said) what bothers people on the pro-Jeter side of the debate is that so many of his detractors seem to completely overlook all of the positives.
League Leaders in Outs Made
Willie Wilson never led the league in outs made.
Edit: Coke to Crispix who went with prose as the informative method, while I wasted time on the tabular.
And the fewest, controlling for at least 3800 PAs in the age 24-29 range:
His truly abysmal offense was overlooked because he was fortunate enough to play for the best team in his league (5 out of the 6 years listed).
please do not list sheehan as part of anything analtyical
Yeah, I get it, but his prior involvement in BPro gives him that halo/tars him with that brush.
And he apparently had "only" 12 (or 13, depending on the source) inside-the-park home runs, when my childhood memories would indicate he had that many just on NBC games of the week.
He was actually decent with the bat in a couple of those seasons. And it wasn't his idea to bat himself leadoff in the years when he sucked.
Pete Rose, ages 24-29: 710 PA/yr, .321/.384/.467 (132 OPS+), 8/15 SB average per year, 5.2 WAR/yr.
Pete Rose, 38: 732 PA, .331/.418/.430 (130 OPS+), 20/31 SB, 2.9 WAR.
Derek Jeter, ages 24-29: 678 PA/yr, .324/.397/.450 (128 OPS+), 24/29 SB/yr, 5.2 WAR/yr.
Derek Jeter, 38: on pace for 731 PA (if he doesn't get extra rest before the playoffs), .324/.364/.450 (119 OPS+), 11/14 (pro-rated) SB, on pace for 2.5 WAR.
EDIT: My point? Many here do exactly the same thing that "we" complain about WRT sportswriters; that they let their emotions and pre-conceived notions about a player color their perceptions about the player's actual ability.
Sheehan is not and has never been on the cutting edge of analytical research. But he understands the research well, and its advantages and flaws, and his writing and conclusions reflect that.
no he doesn't.
Is this common among aging batters? I feel like I see that a lot. Lefthanded hitters who used to be very capable against southpaws but are relegated to platoon players as their performance against them falls off.
It is actually a good thing for the yankees that jeter is hitting lefties so well, since the yankees seem increasingly susceptible to them.
I thought that was Jim Edmonds.
As for Rose, I didn't see him at his best. The player who passed Musial and Aaron on the hit lists before making his run at Ty Cobb, wasn't much of a ballplayer.
I like Jeter's hustle because it results in tangible benefits on the field - more bases taken, infield hits, forcing infield errors - than a player with similar skills and average hustle would get. Rose was probably the same way, but I didn't see a lot of it. There was his sprinting to first on walk which was basically all for show. That doesn't give him any points in my book.
Fair enough. You could be right; it's not my impression, but that's fine.
Richardson's oWAR 1960-1965: 0.4, 0.0, 3.0, 0.9, 0.6, 0.0.
I'll concede 1962 as being "decent". Everything else, considering noise, is basically replacement level.
I agree that he wasn't the one putting his name in the leadoff position. Both Stengel and Houk played him nearly full time (Stengel appears to have platooned him some when he was younger), so they either saw something in him that the statistics don't show or felt that they didn't have a better option. And as a person, I don't think you could have a better guy. I've never read where anyone said something negative about Richardson personally.
I did write an article advocating moving Frank Thomas to SS (based on his very high range factor -- much higher than any SS in the game).
But it was an April fools article.
Why the 1960 starting point? Richardson had 2.2 oWAR in 1959, in only 507 PA.
if you follow the community and listen to sheehan he, like neyer, spout what they have heard legitimately informed intelligent people say on the topic without the depth of thought behind it. they have a script and they read from the script and if the script changes they nod their head and begin reading the revised script.
the analytical community is fortunate that these individuals are now with organizations more worthy of their 'talents' in sheehan riding the titanic that is si into oblivion and neyer with sbnation where serious thinking gets in the way
If Jeter ever tested positive I think Andy's head would explode.
Jeter is hitting .299 against right-handed pitching this year. The power isn't the same as in his best years, but .299 is pretty good against the platoon disadvantage.
I think the affect on Andy would be utterly negligible compared to millions of others.
Again, Jeter's entire resurgence on offense has come from the ability to mash lefties as well or better than he ever has. He is still mediocre at best against righties (.729 OPS), and hasn't hit them well since 2009.
I don't know what to conclude from this. I thought he was done also, but I thought he'd make some adjustments to narrow his game and therefore rebound a bit on offense -- but what I had in mind was that maybe he'd start swinging at pitches in a certain location more, or layoff pitches in another location, or be more aggressive against a certain pitch type, etc. The way his rebound has come -- almost entirely from hitting LHP -- has been surprising to me. I don't know if a hitter would say to himself, "Ok, what can I still do well, hit lefties? Let's focus on that."
You can get some idea from the '75 WS DVDs - Rose was WS MVP that year.
I know the time investment is kind of like Wagner for baseball fans, but I found it totally worth it. Rose on third, Joe Morgan on first.... any pitcher's nightmare.
The postmodernish decontruction of Rose the player, based on a hyperventilating overreaction to amps and laying a few bucks on the Reds to win from time to time, is one of the oddest things this observer has ever witnessed. The idea that Rose was a mere compiler, hanging on by his fingernails, the greenie bowl, and unwarranted access to the lineup card is simply batshit insane.
for all we know if you look at jeter's hit chart he has stopped swinging at certain pitches in certain zones unless there are two strikes as a means of compensating. many a smart older player has sacrificed some area of the hitting zone to concentrate his efforts
He's at .299/.346/.383 (.729) against righties. And I don't want to make too much of this, but in two games on August 19th and 20th he went 7-9 with a HR and three doubles against RHP; before that point he was hovering around a .700 OPS against them.
You are making too much out of it. What's the point of parsing out those two games? There's no point at all.
What are the odds that Derek Jeter has in any conscious way decided to start concentrating on killing lefties at the expense of his production against righties? I think it's very close to impossible. And doesn't The Book say it takes like thousands of PAs for platoon advantages to normalize?
From one who was there, Rose in the '60s and '70s could do a lot. While he never had big HR power, he had several seasons with 40-50 doubles, and a lot of those came from stretching singles into doubles. He was always very aggressive about taking extra bases. He never had the range to really do the job as an infielder but he was an excellent outfielder who could pretty much run down anything hit out there. As happens with a lot of players, he didn't walk much when he first came up but over the years his batting eye got better and he had some pretty good walk totals and excellent OBPs in the '70s (maybe it was exposure to Joe Morgan?). In the mid-'70s he moved back to the infield to let the Reds get George Foster into the lineup in LF. So, basically Pete could do a lot of things to help a team - hitting, baserunning, fielding (if he was at the right position) and making life livable in the clubhouse. His obsession with stats was derided some times not just in the media but by some of his teammates, but I've heard several of his teammates say that they always wanted to be on a team with Pete Rose because that was always going to be a team that got the absolute most out of every opportunity to win a game.
Interestingly, Jeter has already seen more left-handed pitching this season than in all of '11. Including last night's game, he has 173 PAs against lefties versus 388 against righties, whereas last season he had 168 PAs against southpaws versus 439 against righties.
His batting averages from 1982 on:
.271
.245
.286
.264
.219
All with no power, and at first base.
His OPS+ from 1982 on makes him look closer to replacement level, but no one looked at this back then:
90
69--for the 1983 Phillies, who did all right despite having a historically terrible-hitting first baseman
99
99
61
A Jeter who hits like that and who declines in his defense will not be a pretty sight.
I don't think it's that bad. a 61 OPS+ looks ghastly anywhere, of course, but the 90-100 OPS+ isn't too bad. That's better than many teams do even at the power positions, and he brings the record chase and associated positive fanfare with him. I think in a few years that Jeter, even at a 90 OPS+, could do what Michael Young does now - bump around between DH and utility infielder and get a ton of ABs and inspire everyone.
The interesting thing is when he gets to the point where the Yankees can only give him 300 ABs, and the Astros will give him 600.
The 2012 league average OBP is .326 for a hitter in NYS according to BBRef. Getting on base like that means he is contributing at the top of the lineup, even without any power.
Interestingly, Jeter has already seen more left-handed pitching this season than in all of '11. Including last night's game, he has 173 PAs against lefties versus 388 against righties, whereas last season he had 168 PAs against southpaws versus 439 against righties.
I don't think that is an accident. The Yanks don't have a lot of answers for lefties in the lineup this year (.809 OPS vs. righties; .772 OPS vs. lefties). Jayson Nix is their third baseman against lefties right now.
And who started 28 yo non-prospect, September callup, Len Matuszek in 17 games in September/October. Rose started 11. Tony Perez started 3.
Hmm. Is his 2012 resurgence based almost entirely on the fluke of a greater % of his PA being against lefties?
He still had a great batting eye, almost twice as many walks as strikeouts, so he wasn't completely useless. His skill set would have been well suited to pinch hitting. It was only his pursuit of the hit record, teams enabling him to chase that record, and allowing him to write his own name in the lineup card that got him past Cobb.
No, he is hitting better against both righties and lefties than he did in 2010-11.
I wouldn't call it a fluke either. It's a completely rational decision by opponents to get lefties in there whenever it's a valid option. You've got Granderson, Cano, Ichiro, Chavez, and Ibanez from the left, Swisher and Tex as switch hitters. Especially with A-Rod out, the only righties are the sub-.200 hitting catcher, and Jeter.
Well, yeah, but such a rational decision by opponents has nothing to do with whether Jeter has actually rebounded as a hitter.
He was one of those guys who was great to have on your side, but a total PITA as an opponent.
Kind of like Jeter, there, again.
There's nothing objectionable about a pro athlete pursuing a record.
As to "enabling," the Yankees signed A-Rod to a mega-contract extending to his age 42 season with explicit incentives for setting home run records. That's enabling. The '84 Expos were preseason contenders and Rose was a utility player for them, and the '83 Phillies were actual contenders. The Expos gave him 314 PAs in about five months in 1984 and he wasn't writing the lineup card. The hometown team signed him as a player-manager late in 1984, and he did an excellent job as the team's manager. Any "enabling" was for five months between April and August 1985, by the hometown nine, and even that's a stretch.
Big whoop.
allowing him to write his own name in the lineup card that got him past Cobb.
The pace at which he wrote his own name in the lineup card for the Reds in 1985 was essentially the same as a manager other than him wrote his name in the lineup card for the Expos in 1984.
The 1985 Reds jumped to 89 from 70 wins in 1984, 7 wins above their Pythag, and Dave Parker got his career back on track. Rose did a great job managing that team. It's utterly absurd to suggest that the 1985 Reds were some kind of circus act or blight on baseball.
Kind of like Jeter, there, again.
I wasn't aware opponents thought of Jeter in that light.
given that the reds as a team did pretty well under rose's stewardship it's pretty hard to point any accusatory fingers.
the reds did have a lot of talent come up under rose but he did stick guys in the lineup.
eric davis got his start under rose. barry larkin. kal daniels. paul o'neill. chris sabo
sure all these guys were talented but i have seen a lot of managers make guys all but beg to get in the lineup. rose played guys who could play. whatever his failings as a manager he did the most important thing pretty well.
Well, I'd call a 99 OPS+ an "average" hitter, since the difference between 99 and 100 is meaningless. With the OBP properly weighted, we can get him to very slightly above average, and in fact BP has him at a .267 EqA. So, slightly above average. But not really someone who is helping at first base; a .267 EqA is below average for the position.
The .319 SLG really is horrid.
4 Don Kessinger 2867 1967 1972 .638 *6
10 Williams 2792 1962 1967 .860 *79/8
24 Glenn Beckert 2711 1965 1970 .659 *4/86
#1, #2 and #3/4 in the Cubs lineup for many years. :-)
In genuine fairness to Williams, I only included him for humorous reasons. He and Cal make the list because they played everyday.
And that is why I find it hard to believe that Rose would ever throw a game, even under duress. It's not in his nature to accept losing in any way.
I find it hard to believe as well, but he nonetheless deserves the punishment he's been given.
We finally agree on Barry Bonds!
While it is generally understood that Pete wasn't trying to lose games - even the Dowd report could only find examples of betting slips where Pete supposedly had the Reds to win - it still is a slippery slope to be on. If you have $$ down to win today's game, and if you have your best starter going today but an iffy bullpen, do you leave the starter out there longer than you normally would to try to maximize your chances to win today's game - as if it was Game 7 of the WS - at the expense of future games where your best starter is unavailable because he's on the DL because you blew out his arm on a 150 pitch outing in a July game where it was 110 degrees? (OK, that's not a very well written sentence but you get the idea).
This doesn't even take into account the possibility of getting in over your head with the bookies to the point where you can be coerced to throw games. But it still is an example of how gambling on the games can cause a manager to not act in the best interests of the team.
Hmm...I wonder if Dusty has a gambling problem?
Yes, although most of that is defense. Not that it's hard to believe a 41+ guy was a horrible defender.
But as a hitter, he was replacement level for 1B until his age 44 season. The late Rose career is a weird one but go give it some context:
39-41: 289/359/357, 99 OPS+
Now Ray raised mean production. But that's not necessarily the best way to look at it when you're asking a question such as "does this guy deserve a starting job (or 400+ PA). There you are going to focus more on the median as that's a better indicator of what sort of alternative you might have available in the market (i.e. Votto, Pujols, etc. pull that mean way up but you ain't gonna get them) plus what you've got in your own system.
Well, 1980-1982 combined, min 600 PA total, 75% games at 1B ... Rose was 17th in OPS+. And he was 11 points ahead of #19. Let's not overstate things as there are only 20 qualifying players. Yeah, even I can't quite figure that one out. So let's drop our %age requirement to 50% -- this drops Rose to 23rd and puts him in a range of seven 1B from Willie Upshaw at 94 to Tony Perez at 105. There are still 3 guys below Upshaw. Perez aside, that group is largely in their prime.
1983-85
Perez: 641 PA, 103 OPS+ (big 85)
Revering: DNP, he had been truly awful in 81-82 with 79 OPS+
Putnam: put up an 80 OPS+ in 1982; 517 PA in 83 with a 109; 212 PA in 84 with a 35! Done
Ron Jackson: 83-84, 507 PA, 66 OPS+, done
Jorgenson: 83-85, 368 PA, 88 OPS+
Upshaw: 1800+ PA, 123 OPS+
Squires: 261 PA, 51 OPS+
Montanez: DNP, he was really done after 1980
Spencer: DNP, he was really done after 1980
So there really weren't better options down at the bottom of the 1B barrel.
Now, we do get a real mystery. In 1983, Rose had a horrific season -- 69 OPS+ in 555 PA. Why the Phils gave him tht kind of playing time is a mystery. And why the Expos signed him? I guess hoping he'd break the record in Montreal and boost the gate. But ...
Rose 84-85: 922 PA, 99 OPS+, 378 OBP, 9 Rbat, 2 oWAR and even 1 WAR
1B 50%, min 400 PA, 84-85:
Rose is #27 which puts him as a 400 PA type of player. His ranking is lower but again he's in a bumch of nine 1B from Garbey at 94 to Cooper at 104. Chambliss, Bergman, Thomson and Perry got significant playing time while hitting worse than that group of 9. Except for Garbey, everybody in that group of nine has 736 to 1300 PA. Cooper, Tabler, Buckner, Carew, Garvey, Hargrove, Green -- teams were trotting out 1B like this all over the place. And as you could probably guess, Rose and Carew dominate these guys in OBP. Even in comparison to some better-hitting guys, he's not that far off in raw numbers:
Rose 275/378/327
J Thompson 249/362/384
Bochte 279/349/390
Cabell 293/337/389
Francona 301/326/400
Driessen 255/332/397
Power and apparently park effects put those guys ahead of Rose but we're now up to 13 1B plus Rose who, looking at em, you think "we gotta be able to do better than that." Unfortunately, by Rbat, there are only 12 guys who were as much as 10 runs better than Rose and one of those is Bochte. It might seem silly but Pete O'Brien was a top-10 1B in the mid-80s.
But surely things are vastly different now. Alas no ... 2010-2011, min 400 PA, 50% at 1B ... only 17 guys topped Rose's Rbat from 84-85 with 13 beating him by more than 10. Kothcman (1000), Helton (950), Dunn (1150), Loney (1200), Overbay (1050) and LaRoche (800) all had 5 or fewer Rbat in more or equal number of PA as Rose.
Now bring in defense and Rose definitely looks worse but even his measly 1 WAR still would put him around #25 for 2011-12.
I don't kid myself -- Rose got those chances in his 40s because of the hit record. And he had no business playing in 86. But his actual performance was quite typical for a guy who gets about 400 PA a year and wasn't then and wouldn't be now out of range for a bad starting, good bench 1B. As I always say, as long as the Dodgers keep penciling in James Loney at 1B, it's hard to argue that playing Rose was nuts.
Translation: Everyone was terrified of what Rose would do to them if they caused Pete to lose a bet.
Pete Rose's teams vs. their Pythags, 1963-72: Even
Pete Rose's teams vs. their Pythags, 1973-85: + 43**
So your point is well taken, and it naturally aroused by curiosity about the subject of this thread.
Derek Jeter's teams vs. their Pythags, 1996-2012: +45
**Not counting his 1984 season, when he was a part time player for Montreal (-4) and Cinci (+2), or 1986, when he played in only 72 games for the Reds (+3) but it's hard to tell who caused the bump.
Milton Bradley at +13 for his career (not counting the OAK/SDP year and early stuff)
*cough*
I fall under B) and C).
Though that doesn't prevent me from recognizing that Derek Jeter is a great player. I just hate him.
His truly abysmal offense was overlooked because he was fortunate enough to play for the best team in his league (5 out of the 6 years listed).
I've made this point before, but the venerated Bobby Richardson and the reviled Horace Clarke were almost exactly the same player -- same team, same position, same offensive value, nearly the same time -- except that Clarke was slightly better defensively. (But Bobby had better teammates...)
Based on what?
His blandness and corporatespeak in every interview he's ever given? 90% of pro athletes share this trait, and 90% of the ones who don't are generally bungholes.
Something specific he's said or done?
His gift baskets? Unique, but also kind of humorous, you have to admit.
Stories about his pickup moves in bars? Not exactly unknown among thousands of other celebrity Alpha males.
His lack of range in the field?
All those Gold Gloves that caused the future widows of more deserving shortstops to weep softly?
You think all those hits to the opposite field are just luck?
The over-the-top love he gets from much of the media? Do you also hate Cal Ripken, Eli Manning, Michael Jordan, or (if you're ever near Washington) "RG3"? (I almost hate that guy myself just for that chalk-on-the-blackboard nickname)
Having to listen to McCarver go on about him one too many times? That I can understand.
Or is it just all of the above, plus his Satan's Pajamas? Is there any other player you have this reaction to?
Yes. Yes. Yes. Give it time.
There is also a larger historical issue, which I've mentioned on a couple of other threads. Jeter and Mike Piazza are the start of something reasonably new in the history of baseball careers. They are great bat / lousy glove players who were not moved off of their prime defensive positions when their defenses got really lousy. The reason, as I see it, is that modern baseball, with great groundskeeping and wonderful equipment and medicine, has resulted in a game where it's hard to make any really destructive number of bad plays. There are guys who make a lot of bad plays compared to their current peers, but not to their peers a few decades earlier. In many ways, Piazza is like Jimmy Foxx, who started as a catcher, except that Foxx played in the 1930s, where his glove at catcher would have been ruinous to his teams, so they had to move him to 3B and then to 1B. Rogers Hornsby started out as a decent defensive shortstop, but put on weight, which allowed him to hit the ball harder, but cost him his SS range. Nowadays, he'd be like Jeter. There would be no reason to move him (Hornsby, BTW, was moved off of SS several years before he developed the inner ear problem that kept him from going back on popups, which happened in 1923). Rogers would have been a lousy career SS, but no worse than Jeter is. However, in the game of the 1920s-30s, a bad SS did a lot more damage than a bad SS does now.
The game changes. Always has. Hopefully, always will. We're going to see a lot of these guys in the future. Joe Torre, and, to a lesser extent, Ted Simmons, were sort of the warning shot across the bow. Piazza and Jeter are the direct hits. In response, their fans complain that their defenses aren't really that bad, and the fans can become irrational about it and then we have flame wars. Those are unproductive. Trying to figure out how to balance this new kind of career in Hall voting is productive. I doubt that Jeter fans are willing to agree that Jeter will not rank in the top ten of SS. They are going to want to minimize the bad glove. But that's an argument about where to place Jeter within the Hall. It's not an argument about whether he belongs in the Hall or not. Of course he does. He's just not an inner circle guy, because his glove is historically bad. It's historically bad because he is certainly the best hitter ever to be allowed to play SS with that bad a glove. He certainly hits well enough to play elsewhere, but the damage done by his glove is no longer large enough to force that move. The same thing applies to Piazza. That's not a good reason to turn a dispute over where within the Hall to rank them into a dispute over whether to put them in the HoF at all. Of course Jeter is a Hall of Famer. He's just not a top ten SS, because he is the worst defensive SS to ever belong in the Hall. Every other Hall caliber player who was this bad at SS got himself moved to a lesser spot. If we don't confuse the two issues, we'll have a lot fewer flame threads. - Brock Hanke
i was reading your post with an open mind until mid way through the last paragraph with the historically bad nonsense.
give me a break.
defensive stat evaluation is still in its infancy and if you are going to state is the brock hanke eyeball test then i will tell you to get your eyes checked because i have been watching this game for longer than you and jeter had his issues but at worst he was below average.
if you are going to claim historically bad when a betancourt has played almost 1000 games at ss or a michael young almost 800 and if we want go back further how about the houston days of rafael ramirez you have a pretty tall order.
jeter has been a below average shortstop for a long time. but he's held serve meaning there has not been a string of seasons where he's been a train wreck or he would have forced the yankees hand. when jeter dipped around age 30 he did something, what i don't know, and got some of it back for a few years. now it looks like father time has caught up again so maybe in another year it will be time to find another home for 'the captain'.
you speak of wanting to avoid flame threads avoiding phrases like 'historically bad' would be a good start.
Based on what?
Two or three years ago, I was with a buddy in pretty good seats for a Friday night Rangers/Islanders tilt. Directly in front of us were two Islander fans who -- believe it or not -- were somewhat thoughtful, so they spent much of the game congratulating themselves for "debunking" this and that shibboleth.(*)
The third period rolls around and the greatest chant in world sport starts. After the uproarious echoes of "POTVIN SUCKS!!!!" sufficiently fade, one of them says something like, "You know, that's never really made much sense." The other replies, all chin-strokey, "I know; I'd just like to ask sometime, 'But why? Why does he suck??'"
They're sitting kind of 90 degrees in their seats, their front shoulder pointed at the ice; their back one pointed at us, rather inviting an answer.
So my friend gives them one: "He just does. OKAY?????"
(*) One was wearing the Islander pumpkin colored third jersey with a degree of irony -- not DeKalb Corn trucker hat irony, but whatever. Close enough for hockey.
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