MY BASEBALL BIAS

Photo Credit: Newsday / Audrey C. Tiernan

With every passing season, Derek Jeter gets a year older and the questions surrounding his overall play seem to get louder. There are certainly Jeter disciples out there who believe he can do no wrong. Some believe his Yankee captaincy is overrated, shouting from the rooftops that he’s the most overly hyped player in all of baseball. Then there’s the question of his defense. While some feel his few, if any shortcomings are made up for by spectacular plays, others point clearly to his lack of range and make the argument that he hurts his team defensively.

Beginning an analysis like this is always a daunting task because of the varying opinions regarding Jeter. That is why I decided to begin this post with Jeter’s own thoughts. Here is the Yankee Captain speaking to the media yesterday about how much longer he plans on playing the only position he’s ever known.

From Mark Feinsand:

…the Yankees’ captain has no plans to pull a Robin Yount or Ernie Banks and shift positions for the latter years of his career.

Instead, he plans on playing shortstop through the final three years of his current contract, and on remaining there for however many years he plays beyond 2010.

“That’s the plan,” Jeter said. “I haven’t really thought about how long I’m playing. I take it one year at a time; I don’t sit down and say, ‘Well, I hope I’m playing in two-thousand whatever.’ It’s a tough question, because I haven’t really thought about it much.”

Could Jeter, who has been named to eight American League All-Star teams in his 12 big-league seasons - four as the league’s starting shortstop - ever see himself playing another position?

“Right now?” Jeter said, “No.”

Last month, in a guest post over at Peter Abraham’s blog, I addressed this very issue and bluntly wrote that it was time for either the Yankees or Jeter himself to begin preparations for his departure to another position. In that article I wrote:

Jeter has played 1,825 games at shortstop and will turn 34 this coming June. Once he hits the 2,000 game mark (sometime during the ’09 season), he’ll join the likes of Luis Aparicio, Ozzie Smith, Omar Vizquel, Alan Trammel, Cal Ripken, Jr. and a few other greats at the position. Needless to say, it’s a meaningful milestone. But what if Jeter refuses to move? Should the Yankees allow him stay at shortstop and continue to hurt the team defensively? If they do, I think it would be a serious mistake.

Questions about Jeter’s defense, specifically his range, have been around for years now. Rob Neyer of ESPN, a consistent critic of Jeter, and Gary Huckabay of Baseball Prospectus were criticizing Jeter’s defense as far back as 2000. Huckabay wrote this about Jeter on August 12, 2000:

He costs the Yankees perhaps 20-30 runs a year with his glove, but makes that back easily with his bat. Defensively, Derek Jeter is positively horrible. He takes forever to release the ball, has no range, his footwork was best described by Joel Grey in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins and he will join the ranks of the defensively horrific who win Gold Gloves because of their charisma, the occasional highlight reel play, exposure and their offensive production. Kirby, Ken, Carney, Ryne…please welcome Derek!

Neyer, less than a year later wrote the following:

…Derek Jeter is, at best, an adequate defensive shortstop. He simply doesn’t make many plays, and that’s true even if you adjust for the left-handedness (or not) of the Yankee pitchers, and it’s true even if you also adjust for the tendency of the Yankee pitchers to allow ground balls (or not).

Is Jeter the worst defensive shortstop in the major leagues? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. There is some evidence to suggest that he is, but I’m sure there’s evidence to suggest that he isn’t, too. My point is that there’s no evidence to suggest that he’s an outstanding defensive shortstop, or even a good one.

Most of the early analysis on Jete’s “D” pointed to Range Factor, an area in which he has consistently ranked towards the bottom of the league throughout his career. Early critiques using range were flawed for many reasons but mostly because of outside forces like pitching staffs and playing surfaces that weren’t being accounted for. But over the past seven years, even as the technology and methodology have become more precise, the numbers continue to tell the same story - defensively, Jeter is simply average.

Most recently, a study done by professor Shane Jensen of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania used something called Spatial Aggregate Fielding Evaluation, or SAFE, and concluded that Jeter was indeed a terrible major league shortstop.

Here is the jist of what the report said:

…Jensen examined every hit from the 2002-2005 baseball seasons and developed a formula that spit out the probability of the average player at each position recording an out on a batted ball. He then compared this to individual players’ stats and determined how many runs each player’s fielding performance either saved or caused.

Derek Jeter, the New York Yankees shortstop who is often hailed for his defensive prowess and has won three Gold Gloves, ranks dead last in the majors, coughing up 13.81 runs per season. Before the 2004 season, the Yankees traded for A-Rod and shifted him to third base in deferrence of Jeter, but based on these numbers, that move could be costing them 23 runs per season.

Of course many jumped up to defend Jeter, including Yankee senior advisor Gene “Stick” Michael:

Something like that is a disgrace,” the scout said. “It made me ill when I read that article. First of all, what pitching staff was out there? Each team has a different staff. Derek doesn’t really have a sinkerball pitching staff whereas other shortstops, you sit behind certain pitchers, you’re going to get a lot of ground balls.

“You simply can’t do that by those charts, that’s a bunch of baloney,” Michael added. “It’s disgraceful. You have to use a scout’s eye to determine range.”

Even Jeter himself called the computer analysis bogus:

Maybe it was a computer glitch,” the three-time Gold Glove winner said of the report. But Jeter just didn’t laugh this one off. He defended himself, saying, “Every (shortstop) doesn’t stay in the same spot, everyone doesn’t have the same pitching. Everyone doesn’t have the same hitters running, it’s impossible to do that.”

If you haven’t received your 2008 copy of The Hardball Times yet, writer Tom Tango has a piece entitled “With or Without Derek Jeter” that is a must read for anyone who doesn’t understand why people think Jeter isn’t that good of a shortstop. Dan Agonistes of BP and THT summed up the article this way:

In that article Tom uses Retrosheet data to demonstrate without a doubt (at least to me) that Jeter is among the worst fielding shortstops of his generation by showing that when Jeter is on the field, regardless of the other context which Tom does a great job of neutralizing, fewer batted balls are turned into outs. Period. And one would think that should be the bottom line when evaluating defense.

You can read Tom’s thoughts to Jeter’s comments here.

David Pinto of Baseball Musings is also a believer. His PMR (Probabilistic Model of Range) model for shortstops ranked Derek Jeter second to last in 2007. David also shows us in graph form just how poorly Jeter moves to his left and right when fielding balls.

So all of this leads us back to looking for a solution. Many Yankee bloggers have taken up the subject this week with most calling for Jeter to vacate shortstop in the near future. River Ave. Blues believes Jeter will eventually pull a Cal Ripken, Jr. and move for the betterment of the team. I have a feeling WasWatching feels the same way about a Jeter move. Sliding Into Home is a Jeter critic, but Greg reminds us of Jeter’s offseason conditioning program that has put him in fantastic shape for the 2008 season. Might we even see improvements in his defense? Maybe, but I doubt it.

Whether it be first base, as Buster Olney suggests, or the outfield as others have mused, Derek Jeter will eventually be moved. However, the organization better get hip to the idea of at least planning his move before we find ourselves cursing the very name we have cheered for so long.