This Jeter post goes out to all the STATS NERDS and HATERS out there

Hey!  I'm both!  Now let me warn you up front: use caution, everyone.  These takes are piping hot.  Salon's Allen Barra (who has also covered sports for the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal; Greggggggggg approves) is here to drop some knowledge about the same topic covered in my last post: unanimity, and how stats nerds and haters need to get on board with the whole "Jeter deserves it" thing.

Shut up, stats nerds and haters: You’re wrong about Derek Jeter

Trollolololololololololololol.  Gotta hand it to him--if you want angry clicks, you need a good catchy headline.  And I know that most writers don't craft their own, but this one is so delightful that I'd suspect it was penned by Barra.  And if it wasn't, this post is dedicated to the editor who did write it, because that headline fucking rules.

Inflated steroids-era numbers might not show it, but the Yankees shortshop deserves to be a unanimous Hall of Famer

1) If you want to make the case that Jeter is the mostest bestest player evar, maybe don't call attention to the offense-friendly era that he played in.  Or if you do, make it clear that you think his numbers should be considered that much more impressive because of it, not that it is somehow dragging his numbers down.
2) I like that we're getting right to the good stuff up front: Jeter should be a unanimous HOFer, but not because of his numbers.  No no no.  Because of leadership.  And winning.  And of course, class.  Classy class class class.  Fuck class.  Identifying athletes other than those with Roberto Clemente-like track records of being a good person as "classy" is stupider than debating a player's level of "eliteness."  (Note: I don't think Barra uses the word "class" anywhere in this article.  But you fucking well know he's thinking it.)

To my knowledge, what the Baseball Hall of Fame did yesterday was unique: It tweeted the date for an induction ceremony for a still active player to be welcomed into Cooperstown. 

How long has the HOF had a Twitter account?  It's really not that interesting or impressive.  And I know I'm being nit picky and semanticy, so as to the more generic point that the HOF probably has very rarely announced the induction date for an active player via any medium, there are two obvious responses: 1) this is just another outcome of the attention-seeking behavior exhibited by the kind of player who announces his retirement before his final season starts, and 2) the cult of Jeter ballwashers creates outcomes like this, not the other way around.  If the baseball media world weren't full of 60 year old men who write Jeter at least two or three love letters per year, the HOF would not feel compelled to do this.

The date, if you want to make your reservations now, 

I do, so I can show up and boo him.

is July 26, 2020. (A player must be retired for five years before he goes on the ballot.) And if I were you, I wouldn’t wait.

"Hello, is this the Best Western in Cooperstown?  Yes, I'd like to make a reservation for July 26, 2020.  What?  Oh, OK.  I'll call back in late 2019 then.  Sorry for wasting your time."

Not only will Derek Jeter be a first ballot selection, he may well be what Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron weren’t – a unanimous choice. 

"May well" is about as correctly used in that sentence as it is in this one: "The United States government may well have carried out the 9/11 attacks."

If that happens, and I think there’s a very good chance that it will, 

I'm not sure whether to think of this as total delusion, or a clever sales pitch for something he knows is really really unlikely to happen, but slightly more likely if he can build some momentum for it.  The former is more fun, the latter is more pathetic.

it’s bound to stir up even more resentment toward Jeter than we’re seeing in the blizzard of stories that have already appeared since he announced Wednesday that 2014 would be his last year.

Either Barra reads this blog, or he's making a hilarious attempt to manufacture resentment towards this generation's most sportswriter-beloved athlete.  If any baseball writer did anything other than wash Jeter's balls in the aftermath of his announcement, I sure didn't see it.

If one had to synthesize most of the recent Jeter coverage under one headline, it would be: Is Derek Jeter a True Hall of Famer or Is He Overrated?

No, it would not.  It simply would not.  That discussion, which only takes place as an Around the Horn-ish lashback because of fucktards like Allen Barra who won't stop telling us about how Jeter cured polio and smallpox and invented the wheel, has made up about 2% of the Jeter discussion at any given point during the last ten years.  The other 98% has been garbage like this article.

Let’s deal with the first question. There isn’t any doubt that he is going to get into the Hall of Fame. Only nine players in the history of baseball have more hits than Jeter. He’s a 13-time All-Star with five World Series rings. And he’s tremendously popular. 

BUT HE HAS SO MANY HATERZ!  ALL THE MEDIA TRIES TO DO IS TEAR THE POOR GUY DOWN!  LET'S TAKE A MUCH NEEDED MINUTE TO ACKNOWLEDGE HIS GREATNESS, PLEASE!

If you put down a deposit on a hotel room in Cooperstown for July 2020, it’s good as gold.

Why are you still talking about hotel rooms?

Those who have cast doubts about his HOF worthiness have always stressed the lack of bold numbers on his statistics page on BaseballReference.com. 

Ah, those who have cast doubts on the HOF worthiness of one of the most obvious HOFers of the past ten years.  All of those people.  Who you always read about in the, uh, well, usually they make their opinions known in, uh... yeah, they're out there.  They are definitely out there.

What a fantastic straw man this is.  How dare all these multitudes of people say Jeter isn't an HOFer!  What are they, blind?

In other words, he never led the league in many offensive categories. This is true. He only led the league in runs scored in 1998 and in hits in 1999 and 2012, and HOFers have usually topped the list in more stats than that.

See, this is where you bring up the steroid era, if you're desperately trying to pump Jeter's tires.  Somehow he misses the opportunity.

He was never quite a match for the top superstars of his era. Or as Ted Berg put it in USA Today (in a piece titled “Derek Jeter is the most fervently overrated shoo-in for the Hall of Fame”), “In terms of overall value to his teams, Jeter just doesn’t stack up to recent historic greats like Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds, and can’t quite match great contemporaries like Chipper Jones and Jeff Bagwell either.”

As to Bonds, Pujols and Jones, he is right.  As to Bagwell he is stretching it.  Also, here is the very first sentence of Berg's piece:

"Derek Jeter is a bona fide, first-ballot Hall of Famer."

So, yeah.  The guy that Barra has cast as excessively critical of Jeter happens to hold the same opinion that I do: Jeter goes in on the first ballot, and should.  Funny that.  It's almost like people who take shots at Jeter don't think Jeter sucks.  They're just sick of the Barras of the world and are trying to introduce a little reason and objectivity to the discussion.  How dare they.

This is also true, but not to the point. Jeter is a greater player than a Yankee shortstop of the 1940s and early 1950s, Phil Rizzuto, who is in the Hall of Fame. 

Rizzuto was elected by the Veterans Committee almost forty years after he retired.  He is also one of the worst players in the HOF.  If he played for literally any team other than the Yankees, he would have been forgotten about decades ago (putting aside his name's appearance in "Billy Madison").

Nobody said Rizzuto should not be inducted because “He doesn’t quite stack up with Ted Williams and Stan Musial.” 

No, but hopefully, when he was up for election by the writers, they said he should not be inducted because "He doesn't have the counting stats, doesn't have the rate stats, and frankly just wasn't all that great at baseball."

Like Rizzuto, Jeter is a shortstop, and shortstops (and second basemen and catchers) aren’t expected to put up the same numbers as slugging outfielders or first basemen because their position is so much more difficult to play.

Jeter's offensive numbers are the whole reason he's going in.  He's such a better hitter than Rizzuto was that it's hard to describe the gap between them without hyperbole.  Rizzuto had an OPS+ over 100 just three times in his career.  Jeter's has only been under 100 three times.  Even if Rizzuto hadn't missed three seasons serving in World War II, he probably would have just barely cleared 2000 hits.  Saying "Rizzuto deserves to be in because shortstops aren't held to the same offensive standards as other players" is missing the point by ten thousand miles.

For that matter, of the 23 shortstops in the Hall of Fame, Jeter is probably more worthy than all but three or four – Honus Wagner, for sure, probably Arky Vaughan, maybe Cal Ripken and Ernie Banks (who is officially listed as a first baseman, though he won back-to-back MVPs at shortstop).

Ripken and Banks are much better players than Jeter.  Robin Yount belongs on the "probably" list if we're going to count guys like Banks who spent ~50% of their career at SS, as do Luke Appling and Ozzie Smith.  Alan Trammel is about equally worthy as Jeter, but forgot to play for the Yankees, so he may never even make the HOF.

Not that Jeter was great at shortstop. 

He suuuuure wasn't.

I don’t trust any of the supposedly scientific measures of fielding ability, 

That is wise, defensive metrics are pretty suspect, but let's see if you can show any basic knowledge of what makes a good baseball player in explaining whatever it is you're about to explain.

but here are two that surely have some measure of validity: Jeter’s career fielding percentage, 

Your grade for knowledge of what makes a good baseball player came in.  F-minus.

going into the 2014 season, is .976, compared to the average for players at this position over the same period has been .972. 

Savvy move by Jeter to let all those hundreds of grounders that a non-shitty SS would have fielded and perhaps then made an error on trickle past his sort of outstretched glove over the years.

His range in the field has been four chances per nine innings while other shortstops over the same span averaged 4.5. 

That's a good metric, but you sadly haven't processed how colossal that gap is.  First note: that's all other shortstops, not HOF-worth shortstops.  Ripken's RF/9 was 4.7.  The Brewers moved Yount off of SS as he entered his 30s, but while he was there his RF/9 was 5.1.  Banks was at 5.0.  Ozzie Smith's was 5.2 (yes, he's the greatest defensive SS of all time so not the most fair comparison, but I'm going for context here geez lighten up).  Second note: let's see, a difference between Jeter and an average shortstop of 0.5 chances per 9 means roughly one per two games or roughly... let's see here... fucking EIGHTYISH per season.  That's horrendous.  The average SS during the mid 90s through today makes somewhere between 70 and 80 (depending on games played) more outs per year than Jeter.  That's a huge deal.  What conclusion can we draw from that horrible number and his mediocre fielding percentage (while ignoring that fielding percentage is a nearly worthless stat).

I’d say that on the whole this indicates that Jeter was an average fielding shortstop, 

/Price is Right loser horn

perhaps a tad below average. 

He's a ghastly shortstop.  Has been pretty much his entire career.  Has no range.  Has a mediocre arm.  Good thing he kept his spot at the most important defensive position on the field when the Yankees traded for Fish Fillet-Rod (4.62 RF/9 as a SS, .977 fielding percentage).  That's leadership.

But he hit and ran the bases well enough for the Yankees to keep him there 

In spite of themselves, because they knew he'd throw a shit fit if they asked him to move to LF or somewhere else where he wouldn't hurt his team so much.

regardless of his defensive deficiencies.

Yeah, potato, poh-tah-toe.

In any event, he isn’t going into the Hall of Fame because of his fielding – he’s going in because of his hitting and base running.

Truest sentence in this whole article.  I couldn't agree more.  Unfortunately, his excellent offense and very bad defense combine to make him just a regular great player, not a "This guy deserves an honor that Ruth, Aaron, etc. didn't get" player.

Let’s save time and compare Jeter to a hitter who everyone acknowledges as a legitimate Hall of Famer – or at least they would if Pete Rose hadn’t tarted betting on baseball games.

This should be good.

Jeter’s career batting average is .312 to Rose’s .303, and even if Derek played another five seasons to match Pete’s 24 years, and his skills declined over that time as Rose’s did late in his career, Jeter would still end up with a higher batting average.

You know what, I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt on that because the next few things you're about to say are so much dumber, but I'm not even sure if that's true.  Jeter's high batting average has always been bolstered by his ability to rack up infield hits.  I'm not saying that pejoratively, like "HAW HAW HE SUX CAN'T EVEN HIT BALL OUT OF INFIELD," I'm just stating it as a fact.  And it's a fact that matters, because if he played five more seasons, he wouldn't just lose batspeed.  He'd lose a lot of foot speed.  If he played five more seasons, I could see him perhaps getting to 4000 hits, if he stayed perfectly healthy, but I could also see his batting average dropping at least ten points during that time.  And losing ten points even if you're a player who doesn't rely on infield hits isn't that hard to do.  Frank Thomas lost seven points off his career average in his last five seasons.  Barry Larkin lost five.  Craig Biggio (who I'm using because holy smokes, he'd better get elected next year) lost seven.  And those guys were playing in their late 30s, not their early 40s.  But enough of this sort of dumb stuff.  Let's get to the REALLY dumb stuff.

Jeter has a higher on-base percentage than Rose, .381 to .375, 

Adjusted for park and era, Rose was better.

and had a considerably better slugging percentage, .446 to .409.

Adjusted for park and era, Jeter was just a little better.  Rose has the overall OPS+ advantage, 118 to 117.

When you combine these two numbers into the stat beloved by so many analysts, 

In 1998.

on-base plus slugging, Jeter has an even bigger edge, .828 to .784.

Repeat my point from above.

He has been a better power hitter than Rose with 256 home runs, 90 more than the Hit King, in around 3,600 fewer at-bats. And Derek is a far better base runner and stealer, 348 of 448 bases for a success rate of nearly 79 percent, while Pete was a base-stealing liability with 189 steals in 347 attempts for just 54.5 percent. And, if you want to throw in fielding, whatever shortcomings Jeter has had with a glove, he was better than Rose, who was never more than adequate at any of the several positions he played.

This is all idiotic for oh so many reasons, but let's throw Gamblin' Pete a bone here: early in his career, he was a better 2B than Jeter is a SS.  And he actually got pretty good in the outfield for a brief period in his early 30s.  He played 30,000 innings and racked up -14 dWAR, but had the disadvantage of switching positions several times during his career; Jeter has played 22,000 at the same position and has racked up -9 dWAR.  It's basically a push, unless you want to give negative points for players who have undeserved Gold Gloves, in which case Rose collects more negative points than Jeter.  But whatever.

But has Jeter been overrated by fans and an adoring press? 

Best non-rhetorical rhetorical question ever.

If you check my Wikipedia page – and I’m not advising you to since just about everything on it is wrong – you’ll find reference to a Deadspin story back in 2009 titled “Jesus Is the Derek Jeter of Christianity.” The author (unnamed) says that I “think Derek Jeter should win the MVP despite the pesky fact that Joe Mauer is a better candidate …”

Here's the Deadspin piece, written by one of those other FJM guys (who was unnamed then, but I believe has since revealed himself--notice Barra's not too subtle dig at this UNNAMED internet cretin trying to point out that Barra knows exactly jack shit about baseball).  Barra's argument basically comes down to "Well, Mauer has played better this year, but Jeter is Jeter winning leadership calm eyes."

Five years after the fact is probably a little late to say this, but lighten up, Deadspin. I never said Joe Mauer was a better MVP candidate than Jeter. 

Actually you sort of did, and if you didn't, you should have.

What I said was that most of Mauer’s statistics 

All of Mauer's statistics other than R and SB, and certainly all of the statistics that mean the most; specifically OBP and SLG.

were better and that “the case for Mr. Jeter” – the Wall Street Journal makes you refer to men who are living as “Mr.” – “as American League MVP is made by more subjective arguments.”

This is what I referred to way back at the beginning of the post.  Here it comes.  CLASS (or other words that mean class).

Come on, are you going to tell me that Derek Jeter wasn’t a great teammate and that he didn’t contribute to his team in ways that don’t necessarily show up in a box score? Except maybe in the “win” category?

DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE

After all, the Yankees did win the American League pennant and the World Series that year.

With Jeter starting at every position and even pitching to himself, like Bugs Bunny!

And really, why would Jeter need special arguments to be an MVP in a year when he hit .334 with 18 home runs, 212 hits, 107 runs scored, 30 stolen bases and an OBA of .406?

Because Mauer's numbers were significantly better in all (well, both) of those statistics that are actually very meaningful?

Have some of us overrated him a bit? A bit, maybe, 

Don't admit it!  It's a slippery slope from here to asking if he belongs in the HOF at all!  Allen, nooooo!

but we’ll happily bear that cross. See you in Cooperstown in 2020.

But I don't have a hotel room!  Can I sleep on the floor of yours?

This is a repeat of what happened in that last article I posted about.  So I'll post the awesome comment left there by an Anonymous: "I'll admit it. When I started reading that article, I thought there was no way Jeter deserved a unanimous vote. But he convinced me. Jeter does deserve to be a first ballot HOFer."  That's pretty fucking good.

If you know Allen Barra, do me a favor and let him know he's a fucking idiot. 

THE PEOPLE DEMAND MORE JETER COVERAGE

First thing's first--if you've never been to this blog before, and arrived recently for the first time because someone linked you to it along with a note to the effect of "Look at what this angry stupid guy has to say!" please don't bother leaving your dumb comment. Just close this tab and kindly fuck off. Thanks.

With that out of the way, let's get back to Jeter, who surely is not only the greatest athlete of all time, but indeed, the greatest person. Jeter Jeter? Jeter Jeter Jeter. Jeter Jeter calm eyes clutch hustle gift baskets.  Should he be elected to the HOF unanimously? SI's Sam Border (in a column from 2011, right around when he picked up his 3,000th hit) makes a very compelling case that he should, and further, that Jeter should also be the next President and Vice President of the United States of America.

At first blush, it seems unlikely that there could ever been a total agreement on anything in baseball. Arguing has forever been part of the game. It is everywhere: You see the infield in, I see pinched at the corners.

Which is it? It can only be one of those. This is not a good example of an argument in which people who are well-versed in the subject matter can reasonably disagree.

You see a curve, I see a slider.

Again, those are two different things, so if two people are arguing about it, one of them is wrong.

You see the hot dog man, I see cotton candy.

And now you're not even trying.

When it comes to the Hall of Fame, which is currently voted on by people ranging from tenured baseball writers to members of various committees,

From those people, to morality-policing assholes who only shape their preferences based on the direction the wind is blowing, to guys who write for golf magazines and haven't covered baseball in a decade, to idiot know-nothing basement-dwelling bloggers like Murray Chass.

the divergence of opinion becomes even more magnified.

No it doesn't. This is high school level writing. "My thesis is that people disagree about the Hall of Fame. Because it's my thesis and I want to make it sound poignant, in fact I'm pretty sure they disagree more about the Hall of Fame than any people have ever disagreed about anything ever."

Generally, this is a group that can't agree on anything: Sandy Koufax only got 87 percent of the votes when he was elected in 1972.

Although it's idiotic that anyone wouldn't vote for him, at least there's a plausible reason for it with the way his career ended so prematurely.

Mickey Mantle got 88 percent.

And in contrast, that's just fucking stupid.

Even Babe Ruth -- only the greatest hitter ever -- had five percent of the voters say he wasn't a Hall of Famer.

Ah, the original asshole voters, the ones who make it ok for today's assholes to practice their assholism.

Tom Seaver, who missed unanimous election by just five votes, got 98.84 percent in 1992 and remains the closest to perfection.

Seaver was amazing, of course, but to top the percentage received by guys like Aaron and Ruth, he must have been a real asskisser when sportswriters were around. "Yes, Mr. Pearlman, I agree that athletes are horrible people. You are absolutely right. Would you like another autograph?"

In other words, unanimity isn't the Hall electorate's strong point and it is very likely there will never be a player to get 100 percent of the votes. In fact, in looking at the current baseball landscape, I would propose that there is only one player in the foreseeable future who even has a chance at accomplishing such a feat.

Sure, but Mike Trout is only 22. He won't be eligible for about 25 years if baseball fans are lucky.

One player who might bridge the gap between stat-geeks and the crusty old lifers.

True, he's got the gaudy WAR totals, he's got the traditional stats, he's got the hustle/grit.  Pretty prescient of you to know how good he would be back in 2011, before he even made his MLB debut.

One player who everyone -- regardless of their individual views on the game -- sees as worthy.

Whoa, easy! Dial it back at least until Trout is 30.

You've probably heard of him.

Frank Stallone?

His name is Derek Jeter.

:-(

Now, Jeter is a great player. (Watch out! This dumb petty angry blogger is about to say nice things about the player he's been tearing down for the past week!) If I had an HOF vote I'd happily cast it for Jeter on the first ballot. And I'm the first person to point out what a bunch of fucktards HOF voters are. But look, let's face facts. Not even the mystical dreamy eyed flip play good face True Yankee powers of Derek Jeter are going to stop some overprincipled cuntface from casting a blank ballot in 2019 because there are CHEATING CHEATERZ up for election. And there will be some non-cuntface voters who decide to be contrarian and also not vote for him, because fuck it they have a vote and the unwashed masses don't, and they don't feel like voting for him. What are you going to do? It is what it is.  And sorry I'm not sorry, but Jeter just isn't dreamy enough to me to make me hope he manages to cure the collective idiocy of the voters.

Or, at least I hope this is the case. If Jeter actually does get elected unanimously, overcoming the barriers I just described, I'm going to shit myself. God, how insufferable would that be? I'd have to stop following baseball for a year. Disaster. It can't happen. It won't happen.

/Larry B hyperventilates

In the third season of The West Wing (which, frankly, should get 100 percent of the votes when it's eligible for the Greatest Series Ever Hall of Fame),

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Aaron Sorkin sucks balls. Your taste is as bad as your baseball analytical abilities.

there is a scene in the episode "The Two Bartlets" where

Paragraph deleted. I do not give a fuck. Keep your West Wing fanboyism to yourself please. (The gist was that some people are popular with all kinds of voters, from sophisticated to unsophisticated. Same thing he already said above.)

Jeter is the same.

You know who else was the same? Rickey Henderson. Tony Gwynn. Mike Schmidt. None of those guys were unanimous. I don't know how many starlets they fucked, or how many 306 foot opposite field pop fly home runs that would have been outs in 29 of the 30 stadiums in the league those guys happened to hit in big moments, but Jeter is not more worthy of unanimity than they were.

The demographics of the Hall of Fame voters are obviously difficult to pin down, but there are some generalizations that can be made. To get 100 percent of the votes, a player would need to appeal to everyone:

Top notch analysis.

Those who value traditional statistics and those who look at more modern metrics;

Those who prefer the latter to the former see Jeets for what he is: an awesome player, a first ballot HOFer, but a guy who also is pretty hilariously overrated by those who prefer the former to the latter.

those who care about winning and those who want gaudy personal totals;

People who care more about the former demand to know why Scott Brosius hasn't been enshrined yet.

those who look for dignity and representing the game well and those who simply use their "gut" to tell them if a player is worthy.

These people are also known as fucktards.

Want advanced stats? Jeter's career WAR is 70.2, which is 55th all-time among position players. Roberto Alomar, who got 90 percent of the 539 votes cast this year and will be inducted in Cooperstown on Sunday, is below him at 63.5. So is another shortstop in Barry Larkin (68.9), as well as Tony Gwynn (68.4), Jackie Robinson (63.2),Yogi Berra (61.9) and roughly three-quarters of the rest of the players already in the Hall.

Jeter's WAR total is in the top quartile of all HOFers. Therefore: voters should get together and agree to induct him unanimously when no one has previously been so inducted. Makes sense. If we can't tongue Jeter's asshole one last time before he fades into history, why have a Hall of Fame at all?

Prefer more traditional markers? Jeter has already passed 3,000 career hits, a long-time benchmark for position players.

Yes. This is one of the reasons he is definitely a Hall of Famer. It is also not a reason to treat his election differently than Stan Musial's, Ted Williams's, etc.

Consider, too, that Cal Ripken is currently the position player toreceived the greatest percentage of votes (98.53 percent in 2007) and Jeter has him beat -- handily -- in most critical rate statistics.  Jeter's .312 career average is 36 points higher than Ripken's. His .383 on-base percentage is 43 points higher. His .831 OPS is 43 points higher.

First of all, great job double-counting OBP and OPS.  Hmmm.  I wonder how their career SLGs stack up?

Second of all, "critical rate statistics." Interesting. Why are they so critical?  Why isn't the fact that Ripken had almost 200 more HR than Dreamy Eyes McGee in only 800 additional PAs critical?  Anyways, when you adjust for park and era, Jeter's offensive edge over Ripken is not as striking (career OPS+es of 117 and 112, respectively). But how about the "critical" counting stat of WAR (rWAR in this case, because fuck Fangraphs), where Ripken has a 95ish to 70ish edge? Jeter actually has an edge in oWAR, but it is more than made up for by Ripken's enormous dWAR edge (35ish to -10ish). Turns out baseball is about more than just hitting, and Jeter has been a joke on defense for about 14 seasons. Ripken never recorded a negative dWAR in his career. Jeter has only recorded a positive dWAR three times, and two of those were during the 90s. It's fucking bonkers how good Ripken was. Jeter is a first ballot HOFer, but Ripken is one of the 50 or so best players ever. Jeter can't make that claim, no matter how clurtch he is/was.

Ripken, of course, is crediting with "saving baseball" after the disaster of the 1994 strike and there is value in that.

Typo is (sic).  Anyways, what? If that even is a topic people discuss, I'm pretty sure McGwire and Sosa receive that credit, as they probably should.

Public perception is certainly a factor for some voters -- does this player "matter?" -- and Ripken did. But as much as anyone ever has, Jeter has mattered, too.

Barf.

He has been the face of the game's most famous franchise 

Definitely.

and, in many ways, the entire league, 

Barf.

for nearly his entire career: After 9/11.  

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Can't we all just agree that without Jeter, we never would have gotten over it?

When Team USA competed in the World Baseball Classic for the first time. 

First of all, I like the WBC just fine, but let's face facts: no one really gives a shit about it.  Second of all, in the 2006 WBC, against teams not named South Africa (which the US beat 17-0), Jeter was six for seventeen with one walk and two errors.  We didn't get out of the second round, finishing 8th, behind basically every single other nation on earth that cares about baseball.  So yeah.  Not sure "Member of 2006 USA WBC team" is a really strong line on his resume.

When Yankee Stadium was closed down. 

I like the implication that this was an important moment for MLB rather than just the Yankees.

When George Steinbrenner died.

Same.

He has been popular. 

Definitely.

He has been dignified. 

How?  How?  Fucking how?  This is more idiotic Jeter ballwashing with virtually no substance.  Yes, he has never been legal trouble or linked to steroids during his career.  Congratulations Derek, you've reached the lofty dignified heights achieved by 90% of all MLB players.  What else has he done?  Is he known for any special charity efforts, above and beyond what any other star player does?  I've fucking had it with hearing about how when a guy plays for the Yankees and doesn't live like a shithead, somehow he's the epitome of class.  Fuck that.  Ken Griffey Jr. is virtually identical to Jeter in the "he wasn't a shithead" department.  Griffey's one mildly unclassy act was the way he more or less forced the Mariners to trade him to Cincinnati, ruining their leverage; the Jeter equivalent is the way he refused to switch to 3B for ARod.  Both guys, other than those mild missteps, were/are decent human beings.  So why is one of them just remembered as the guy who hit all those home runs without steroids, and the other is Christ come back to earth?  It's fucking disgusting.  I'm sick of it, and if you disagree with me on this point, you are a bad person.

He has been reliable and trustworthy for fans, never letting them down with even a hint of a connection to gambling or crime or the use of PEDs.

LOLZ @ the idea that he deserves a pat on the back for not being linked to gambling.  What decade is this, the 1920s?  Other than Rose, has a single active high (or even medium) profile player been linked to gambling since World War II?  If one has I sure as hell can't think of him right now.  [Late breaking update: Chris W, because he is a jealous hater who wants to dump on my blogging at every possible turn, points out that Denny McClain fits this criterion.  Fair enough.  So that's two prominent players since WWII.  Someone throw Jeter a parade for not being either of them.]

No one would say that Jeter is the best player ever or even, necessarily, of his generation. 

Oh, I don't think you'd have to look too far to find quite a few people who think both of those things.

But that is not the issue here. The question is whether he is someone everyone, regardless of how they rate a player's career, could see the name "Derek Jeter" and immediately think "Hall of Fame."

Greg Maddux didn't get 100% of the vote.  He's on the short list of nominees for best pitcher in baseball history.  He hit every traditional statistical milestone, and was adored by "fancy stats" people.  He was regarded as a good teammate.  He has a ring.  There is no way to not think "Hall of Fame" when you see "Greg Maddux."  Of course I think it's moronic to say "Well Maddux didn't get 100% of the vote, so Jeter shouldn't either."  But saying "Jeter has 3000 hits and 70 WAR, so can't we all agree that he should go in unanimously?" is equally moronic.

The question is whether Jeter is good for all time zones.

It's tough for anyone to stack up to an all time legend like Greg Maddux.  So how about we compare Jeter to Wade Boggs?  3000 hits, played for two of baseball's marquee franchises and won a ring with one of them, was great with the glove, and has a much higher WAR total than Jeter.  Sounds like a sure fire "Hall of Fame" guy to me.  Now I'll grant that Boggs had some personal failings that Maddux, Griffey, Jeter, etc. appear not to have.  But he wasn't ever connected to steroids, crime or (lol) gambling.  Other than the fact that he drank too much and allegedly had some problems with teammates, how was he not good enough "for all time zones" to be unanimously elected?  "But Jeter Jeter Jeter!" is about as far as any of these ballwashers can go, and it makes me sad for them.  This and so many other articles reads like a teen girl's diary entry about a member of a boy band.  It's fucking pathetic.  Full stop.

If you look at the active players ahead of Jeter on the all-time list of position players in terms of WAR, there may be an inclination to wonder why Jeter -- and not, say, Albert Pujols -- would have the best chance at becoming the first 100 percenter. It's a reasonable question.

It sure is!

Here are the players ahead of Jeter:

1. Alex Rodriguez

2. Albert Pujols

3. Chipper Jones

4. Jim Thome

Let's not ignore other guys who at the time of this writing were retired but not yet eligible or currently on the ballot but not yet elected: Frank Thomas (ahead of Jeter in rWAR, behind in fWAR, but like I said fuck Fangraphs), Larry Walker (same) Jeff Bagwell (UH OH HE HAD MUSCLES BETTER NOT ELECT HIM), Palmeiro (OK I can see why he's not getting elected) and Griffey.  Not to mention Lou Whittaker.  Sorry Lou--maybe if you had been more dignified and classy, you wouldn't have been booted off the ballot so quickly!

Taken in reverse order, Thome (while an incredible hitter) will inevitably be docked by some for not playing a field position for much of his career. He never really had a chance.

And maybe Jeter should be docked by some for being a bad defender and not having Thome's 600+ home runs.  At least Thome wasn't actively hurting his team while the other team was batting.

Jones, who statistically is one of the most underrated players of all time (his 141 OPS+ is third among third basemen in history) will nevertheless suffer among the intangible-heavy voters, who may hold back because they don't think of him as a "winner." 

These people are idiots who should have their HOF votes taken away, and then be sealed inside a cave somewhere in Nepal.

It also hurts Jones that he played his entire career in Atlanta, which -- while certainly not Kansas City -- doesn't have the spotlight of other cities.

This is the closest he will come to admitting that "Jeter deserves more credit because THE BIG APPLE QED."

Pujols, too, will be knocked for a lack of winning, though he has time to change that.

He has since won his second World Series, getting on base at almost a .500 clip and hitting five home runs in 80 PAs that postseason.  On the other hand, he has also since started hitting like dogshit, fueling speculation (from me) that he's older than he says he is, and will continue to decline rapidly.  He's still almost certainly going to top 100 WAR though, putting him in the top 30 or so all time.  600 HR isn't out of the question and 3000 hits is a possibility.  He could retire today and have had a better career than Jeter.  But I agree, because Jeter happened to play on a really awesome Yankees team during the late 90s that won four WSes, and Pujols did not, that's definitely a reason that Jeter is the better player.

Ultimately, the question with Pujols will be about his popularity. Even now, in his prime, Pujols ranks sixth in terms of jersey sales, below players like Jeter (No. 1), Joe Mauer (No. 2) and Chase Utley (No. 4), and even if continues to produce the way he has, his (relatively) lower profile will likely be what keeps him from challenging the 100 percent mark.

You're a fucking diptard.  At the time this was written Pujols had a pretty good shot at hitting 700+ home runs.  He had an outside shot at 763 (finished 2011 with 445--was supposedly about to enter his age 32 season, meaning if he could do something like 35-35-35-30-30-30-25-25-25 he'd be at Ruth's mark entering his age 41 season.  I mean if ifs and buts were candy and nuts and all that, but still.  Saying in 2011 "If Pujols can continue to hit like he has (i.e., like one of the top ten hitters ever), I suppose he might be as good a nominee for unanimous HOF election as Jeter, but he doesn't sell as many jersies, so...." is just agonizingly stupid.

As for A-Rod, the issue is moot. His admission to using PEDs during his career means the question is less about whether he'll get in unanimously and more about whether he'll get in at all.

Very true, and much more true in 2014 than it was in 2011, but can we also just agree that A-FRAUD's real sin was dragging Jeter down throughout the former's whole career as a Yankee and limiting New York to just one WS win during that time?  Honestly, Derek deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor for overcoming A-ROID's .365/.500/.808 line during the 2009 postseason and carrying the team to a championship.  (To Jeter's credit, he hit like a maniac that postseason too: .344/.432/.563.)

Jeter does not have that issue. He is clean. 

$2,000 from Larry B to the Red Cross for a positive test anytime before the end of this season.  Can you imagine the hilarious articles writers like this guy would frantically bang out in Jeter's defense?  "If he's guilty of anything, it's wanting to win too much."

He is beloved. 

You don't say.

He has won five championships. 

And yet, just one without Tino Martinez.  Who was carrying who on those late 90s Yankees teams?  Food for thought.

He has been a 12-time All-Star. He has the numbers, regardless of which numbers you happen to think are important.

Rickey Henderson: did not have the numbers, or something.

I know that baseball has forever been a game of friendly disagreement but Derek Jeter is a first ballot Hall of Famer.

Correct.  Unfortunately that's a different (and much less stupid) point than the one you've been trying to make throughout this dumb article.

Surely there's at least a chance we could all agree on that?

I have no problem with that.  Now shut up and go away.

Teaser for my next Jeter post: the title of it (not making this up) contains the words: "Shut up, stats nerds and haters."  It's gonna be gooooood.

Derek Jeter Derek Jeter Derek Jeter Derek Jeter Derek Jeter

FireJay is going to be a Jeter-only blog until further notice.  I've got all kinds of material backed up, from the guy who wants the HOF waiting period changed for him, to a guy who says he's not a HOFer at all (not enough batting titles--no I'm serious).  It's all Jeter, all the time for the next couple of weeks.  Since most of these don't require much of an in-depth post, I should be able to get through them pretty quickly.  For tonight's post, I'm just going to take some pot shots at his personality, because you know what?  Fuck Derek Jeter and fuck anyone who says he's a "classy guy" for no apparent reason.  Fuck 'em all.

You know what's a classy way to retire if you're a superstar?  You play out your last season, then when the season is over, you announce your retirement.  You know what else is an acceptable way to retire?  You announce near the end of your last season that you will retire when it's over, so your hometown fans have a chance to cheer extra loudly for you a few last times.  This is particularly acceptable if you've played your whole career with one team.

You know what's a really fucking obnoxious way to retire?  Announce before the season starts that it will be your last, turning said season into one long farewell tour so everyone can suck your dick for 162 games straight.  Examples: Chipper Jones, and you-know-who.  YEAH JEETS.  It becomes especially motherfucking obnoxious when the player who does this--and they always ostensibly do it in part so that "it doesn't become a distraction" during the season--then takes every single goddamn opportunity to turn the whole thing into as much of a distraction as possible.

A couple of quick caveats: First, Chipper was and is an asshole, but he obviously wasn't as horrible about this as Jeter is going to be, even though they both announced during spring training.  I really don't think Chipper gives a shit about attention, which is what separates him from Jeter.  Second, while I despised the Mariano Rivera 2013 Goodbye Tour that took over last season, I'll cut him a bit of a break given that he was coming back from that nasty knee injury he sustained in 2012.  It was a legitimate question whether he would pitch again--then he decided to, and also announced his retirement, since he was old as shit and somehow coming back from a torn ACL.  I can live with that.

Anyways, back to the most important person who has ever played baseball, or breathed air on this planet, Derek "My Playoff Triple Slash Is Virtually Identical To My Regular Season Triple Slash" Jeter, and the press conference he conducted earlier this week.  Good thing no one was distracted by it!  Now, I am not so much of a dipshit to think "distractions" like retirement announcements and whether a player is straight or gay have a significant effect on a team's performance.  I just hate disingenuous people, and if ever there was a disingenuous thing to do, it's be Derek Jeter, announce your retirement in February, then pretend to be surprised and/or nonplussed about how everyone wants to talk about it and shower you with gifts and questions and love.

And while most of the conversation was about his retirement, it wasn’t like most retirement announcements we normally see. Jeter had no prepared statement. He said he said everything in the Facebook message last week. The reason? He didn’t want to be a distraction and didn’t want his teammates to have to show up for a formal announcement ceremony. 

That's Jeter.  Always thinking of the team first.  Even when he was a below average defensive shortstop and his team traded for an elite defensive shortstop and then Jeter pouted, refused to move to third base, and forced the team to force new guy to move to third base, that was all about the team.  By which I mean Team Jeets.

He just asked for it to be a normal. ”I still have a season to play,” Jeter said.

How dare you forget, sportswriters?  How fucking damn dare you?  He's still got a season to spend missing every ground ball not hit directly at him, legging out a handful of infield singles while risking a humiliating career-ending hamstring explosion, and getting a fucking standing ovation everywhere he goes.  (Aren't you just so excited for his last game at Fenway, when TAWM BRADY NATION will applaud for him?  You don't suppose that'll be publicized and analyzed for weeks and weeks afterwards, do you?  Nahhh, I didn't think it would either.)

When pressed for reasons for his retirement he half-jokingly, but somewhat seriously, asked the reporters if they didn’t really read his Facebook announcement. 

Talking down to reporters who are just doing their job is the ultimate classy move.   

Because that was it. Everything he had to say about it was in there.

I'm disappointed in HardBallTalk's Craig Calcaterra for the non-editorial nature of this writeup.  He's a smart guy who usually injects a little snark into his posts when it's needed.  And boy was it needed here.  Instead, we're getting just the facts about Flip Play McGee

Still, the questions came. 

Those ignorant assholes!  They should have just asked him how his swing felt.  That's what their readers wanted to hear about.

And to some degree Jeter did open up. He said that a lot of his career had become a job in the past year. 

Most pathetic and trite athlete appeal for sympathy ever.  "It's not fun anymore."  Fuck yourself with a wrench.  

Not the playing — he said he still likes coming to the ballpark and playing — 

Whew!  I was worried!

but meeting with the media. 

DIE.  As much as I despise the sports media, you'd better believe that if it meant I could play professional sports for a living, I would be happy to deal with their shit for an hour or two a day during the season and zero hours a day during the offseason.

Answering the increasing questions about how long he can go on. 

He's 40.  He hasn't been healthy and effective in 16 months.  What kinds of questions does the guy expect?

He also referred to the rehab from injuries like he endured last year.

From 1996 through 2012, he averaged 151 GP per year.  Lucky bastard.  

A couple of reporters asked Jeter if he was emotional about it. He sparred with them — “what, are you trying to get me to cry?” he joked. And there were no tears. 

WHAT A HERO. CAPTAIN CLUTCH STRIKES AGAIN.

Jeter referenced the fact that he has always hidden his emotions to some extent, but yes, he has them. He’s not going to be emotional about it now, however, as he still has a season in front of him. 

What a successful attention-seeking strategy.  Tell everyone that your career is ending soon.  Then remind them at every possible turn that it is not ending yet.  If anyone forgets to ask you about your reasons for retiring, remind them again that you're retiring soon.

”It’s not the end yet,” Jeter said.

Christ.  Fucking kill me now.  Seven more months of this shit.  I'd rather go through the Brett Favre saga again than watch MLB Network or Baseball Tonight at any point between now and October.

PS-Remember that one time Jeter dove into the stands after he caught a foul ball?  Greatest moment in American history.

PPS-Fuck Derek Jeter.

Barry Zito Is Fucked, And He Knows It

First of all, a brief congatulations to Martin for winning last week's Reader Extra Participation Friday. I really don't want to talk about it much, but I will print the part of his submission that earned him the title:

anonymous/Anonymous/Chris Hart

For those who don't know the context, that's a listing of three people in descending order of shitheadedness from bad to worse to worst. Hard to disagree, really.

So anyway.

(awkward silence)

CNNSI's John Donovan recently wrote a pseudo puff piece about arguably baseball's most overpaid player. It's not bad journalism, but it's sure full of entertainingly awful quotes from Zito himself, who is slowly coming to terms with the fact that he stinks. I'm not saying he's there yet... but you definitely get a sense that he's on his way. And once he accepts and embraces said stinkness, he can work on steeling himself up to be relentlessly mocked and used as an example of why not to spend big money on free agent pitchers for the next five to ten years.

Then came last season, when he was not only not Zito-like, he was worse than your run-of-the-league starter. He had a 4.53 ERA, the worst of his career. He didn't throw 200 innings for the first time since becoming a full-timer. And he had an ERA+ -- a measure that takes into account the park that he pitches in and factors the league-average for a pitcher -- of 98. A 100 ERA+ is considered average.

This spring, at least before last Friday, he's slid even further. He had a 14.92 ERA in four starts before Friday's exhibition game against the White Sox. He had given up 21 hits in 12 2/3 innings. He didn't have a single strikeout. He looked, in a word, terrible.

Where does Barry Zito, who soon will turn 30, go from here? Back to the elite pitcher he once was? Or into the scrap heap of free-agent busts?

What's wrong with this guy?

Yeah, Barry. What the hell is wrong with you? Shoot from the hip. Try to give us something specific.

"For me, I'm just focused on what I got to get done," Zito said.

Translation: "Jesus shitballs, I hope I don't embarrass myself too much for the next few years. If I could crack 15 wins a couple of times, that would be nice... how about I keep the ERA in the high 3s? That shouldn't be too much to ask, playing in a moderate pitcher's park in the NL. Oh fuck it, just please don't let me get any worse than I was in 2007."

"Whatever people think, they're going to think.

"I'll tell you one thing: I am so, fucking, lucky that I'm doing this in San Fran as opposed to Boston or New York or Philly. If I played like this while being paid like I am in one of those cities, someone would have taken my family hostage and burned down my house while I was on a road trip sometime last summer."

But I still have to go forward with what I'm doing."

"Well, for what it's worth, I won't be spending too much time this year fondly remembering last year. Hopefully that counts for something."

His fastball, never a strength, is a huge weakness now. Scouts report that it almost never cracks 90 mph any longer. Many report it tops out about 88 mph. It's hard for Zito -- hard for anyone -- to be effective with an 88 mph fastball.

"We had it at 85-86," a scout from a rival team said.

Zito has heard all the questioning, of course. But he says he healthy. (Clearly, he wouldn't be throwing 96 pitches in an exhibition game otherwise.) He is in a good mindset. He says he simply has a few things to ... work on.

Hmmmmmm. Good thinking, buddy. What would you say are a couple of the areas you've really hit hard with this revolutionary "working on" plan?

"I feel good. I'm where I got to be," he insisted.

Oh....... you're...... you're OK then? You sure? You don't want to, you know, work on your plummeting strikeout total or try to stop giving up so many home runs?

Fine, you're the boss. You know yourself better than anyone else I guess. I'm just having a hard time agreeing that you're "where you've got to be." Nevermind though.

Friday's turn against the White Sox -- albeit in a meaningless afternoon game in March -- was, maybe, a turn in the right direction. But only maybe. At the minimum, it's something for Zito and any faithful Giants' fans to cling onto for the time being. It's something concrete. And that's more than anyone's had with Zito for a long, long time.

Great! You're finally taking a step in the right direction this spring. How are you going to build off this decent performance?

"It's always good to have something to base confidence off of," Zito said, "instead of trying to ... uh ... you know, just have it."

You clearly don't have it. You sound like a college freshman at a party, trying to tell himself that because he's wearing an ironic t-shirt he's cool enough to pick up that girl over there who's miles out of his league.

Enjoy sleeping on your giant piles of money. That's about all you've got going for you.

If Anyone Knows Anything About Playoff Success, It' Reggie Jackson

You sure can't tag this article "anecdotal bullshit", because this is Reggie F'in Jackson talking. I realize that the baseball world is inundated with A-Rod and Yankees crap lately, but this article from the NY Post seems particularly egregious to me. So here goes:

"Meet the New Mr. October: Reggie Believes A-Rod Will Keep On Rollin"

"Rollin"?

October 3, 2007 -- The man who spit in the face of October pressure believes Alex Rodriguez won't be smothered by it for the third straight postseason.

“I think he will do super well," Reggie Jackson said yesterday ...

"SUPER" well, Reggie? Is that really what you meant to say? "I think he willl do SUPER well!"? Up until now, I thought Reggie Jackson was pretty manly; now I think he's a bit effeminate.

“Look at the year he had. You can't have a better year than he had. Who was the last guy to roll into the postseason with the kind of year he had this year?"

Albert Pujols, last year.

Jackson knows what makes Rodriguez tick;

Which is? A watch battery? Lime jello? Strippers? Boos? His Collector's Edition DVD of Mallrats?

Oh. You're not going to tell me. Darn.

understands that despite the MVP season, there are people waiting to empty their lungs with boos for the one guy who the spotlight will be on from beginning to end.
“They booed him from the start this year," said Jackson, who will be with the Yankees for today's workout at Jacobs Field.

Yawn.

Loudly booed when he dropped a foul pop in the first inning on Opening Day, Rodriguez turned the boos to a summer full of cheers, and chants of “MVP, MVP" and finished with 54 homers, 156 RBIs and a .314 average. Now, that success is something Jackson believes Rodriguez is going to lean on.

“He got off to a great start and never stopped," Jackson said. “And it wasn't all smooth. He couldn't have gone through anything tougher than what happened to him in Toronto and the family situation. It wasn't like he got a free pass."

Hyperbolic crap. He could've gone through something much worse. In fact, word has it that A-Rod and his wife are expecting another child. It could've been much tougher; he could've been hit by a bus. Except most bus drivers are better at driving buses than baseball writers are at writing about baseball.

Is Rodriguez's regular season enough for him to bounce back from an 0-for-4 effort in a Game 1 defeat?

This is quite the non sequitur Is he referring to the past or speculating about the future? The Yankees haven't even started playing their series yet!

Remember in 2005, Rodriguez was coming off a year in which he would be voted the MVP and soiled the bed in the ALDS against the Angels when he batted .133 (2-for-15) and set the record for the most inhales and exhales at the plate. The deeper the breath, the worse the at-bat.

I am good at remembering this because writers like you have mentioned it in every article this season.

Rodriguez promised in March this year was going to be different, and it was. Instead of his life being an open book,

huh?

what he said was measured and rarely in depth. Now, on the verge of his fourth - and possibly last - postseason as a Yankee, Rodriguez is poised to wash away the stench of 2005 and 2006 (1-for-14; .071 against the Tigers).

“I am focused on 2007," Rodriguez said following a brief workout at Yankee Stadium. “It's a whole new year. I am taking one pitch at a time."

I feel like sports stars have to give cliched bites to writers because that's all the feeble-brained writers can handle. I think it'd be funnier if A-Rod announced, "Fuck it. It's a whole new year. I am taking it TWO pitches at a time, and when I hit TWO home runs at a time maybe you goddamn writers will stop writing about those thirty goddamn at bats!"

Since Indians starter C.C. Sabathia is murder on lefties - they hit .203 (41-for-202) against him - a larger responsibility falls on Derek Jeter and Rodriguez, who are a combined 19-for-39 (.487) against the lefty they haven't seen since Sept. 1, 2004.

Poorly written. Sentence is too long; separate last clause into independent sentence. I will now stop picking on grammar.

And you know who will get the blame if Jeter and Rodriguez don't hit Sabathia and the Yankees lose, right? It won't be Jeter.

Which is a damn shame, because it seems to me that in your previous sentence, you said that Jeter and Rodriguez share the responsibility. It's too bad you asshole writers are willing to assign Jeter a share of the responsibility, but you know goddamn well that you won't assign Jeter a share of the blame.

“When you come to New York you get invited to the dance every year," Rodriguez said. “You keep getting chances."

Wow. This is competes with the opening quote for "Most Effeminate Thing Said By Current or Former Yankee Superstar". I wonder if A-Rod was sad about not getting invited to dances every year when he was in high school. Or maybe when he played in Texas.

With the right to opt out of the final three years of his contract, this could be Rodriguez's final chance to win a World Series in pinstripes. It's a chance Jackson believes Rodriguez will finally cash in on.

“He has got to be digging himself," Jackson said. “If that was me, I would be digging myself once a day. The year he had was unbelievable."

Digging himself? I don't think I even know what that means. Speak English, Reggie, or at least spit your candy bar out when you're talking.

Now we will see how it ends. Will it be a springboard or an albatross? The guy who had put Mr. in front of October is betting on the former.

YOU BE THE JUDGE!

If you think A-Rod is cool, turn to page 81, then buy this poster and send it to George King.

If you think A-Rod sucks, go back to page 1 and realize that this is what real baseball fans want to do to you.