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From Maury Allen:
All he does is play baseball and play it better than anybody has over the last decade or so with five World Series triumphs, seven pennants and eleven division titles.
He is, in journalistic terms, colorful on the field and colorless off the field. He has made some of the most amazing plays in baseball with his incredible throw to his catcher from somewhere between third and home to catch a shocked Jeremy Giambi in a playoff game against Oakland and the vaulting, diving, life-threatening catch in an extra inning thriller against the Red Sox.
His lifetime batting average coming into the 2010 season is .317 with the most hits ever of any Yankee, 2747. The next three names on the Yankee hit list are Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle. He has never batted lower than .291.
In his 16 seasons around the Yankees, there has never been a hint of scandal, off-color conduct or controversy about him……
Jeter has shown no signs of slowing down as a player in the first month of the Yankees 2010 season. His average has stayed around .300 and his fielding skills show no signs of deterioration.
It is a good guess that this well-conditioned, dedicated, serious athlete will be leading the Yankees for another half dozen years or so on the field. Then he will become the manager or general manager and stay with the Yankees another 30 or 40 years.
I think Derek Jeter is the best all around player in baseball today. I think he may be one of the five or six best all around players ever. All he seems able to do constantly is win.
I don’t know anything about Derek Jeter off the field. Maybe that is just the way it is supposed to be when you are the second coming of Jack Armstrong.
Derek Jeter is a great baseball player. He is one of the 3 or 4 best offensive shortstops of all time, and is likely amongst the top 10 at the position overall. You could make a case for him being one of the top 10 players in the sport over the last decade, and one of the top 25 or so best all around players today. Furthermore, as Allen notes, he has been nothing but respectful and well behaved off the field, with nary a hint of scandal surrounding him in his 16 years with the big club.
Yet, despite all of this, Allen feels the need to foist excessive praise on Jeter, lauding him as the best all around player in the game today and one of the 5 or 6 best players of all-time. I believe that most objective baseball fans would find this statement to be ridiculous. Articles like Allen’s tend to do more harm to Jeter’s image than good, as they usually make people think of him as overrated and overexposed. The ridiculous fawning creates this image of Jeter as a superhero, a standard that Jeter can never hope to meet with his on-field play. People read praise like this, watch Derek play, and then wonder what all the fuss is about. It obscures Jeter’s actual greatness by causing most fans to view him as overrated.
Derek Jeter is a great player, one of the greatest at his position of all time, and is still producing at a high level. There is no reason to overrate him. Let his play and his actions speak for themselves.
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6 Responses to No Need To Overrate Jeter
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TIQ IQ
“with his incredible throw to his catcher from somewhere between third and home to catch a shocked Jeremy Giambi in a playoff game against Oakland”
Wasn’t he up the 1st baseline? Yup, thought so… http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tsFBLwEnOoA/SbqfD0CG1vI/AAAAAAAAAJI/hPwjGiM_Vwk/s320/the+flip.jpg (sfw)
Also, I completely agree. It’s been fun watching Derek play all these years and it’s going to suck not to seem him out there but Allen is going a little overboard with his praise.
Moshe, you off-handedly place Jeter as possibly being among the top 10 at his position all-time. Obviously, Honus is at the top. I guess Arky is second, although his career (partly because of the war) wasn’t as long as many would like. Ripken had many more home runs and better power (given era context), but Jeter’s OBP was nearly 50 points better and has better advanced offensive metrics (wOBA, RC+). Is there anyone obviously better than Ripken/Jeter? Banks? Yount (he played too many games off of SS)? A defense-first player like Ozzie? A-Rod …
I depends on how much you weigh defense and how important a position change is. I think you can justify Jeter anywhere from 3rd to 8th, maybe a bit lower.
Noooo…Jeter’s third at SS, and for me it’s not particularly close, hell he may even have an argument for second. He’s likely a top fifty or sixty player of all time. Jeter has 10000 (vast majority at SS) PAs of a 121 OPS+ compared Ripken’s 12000 PAs of a 112 OPS+ not to mention Jeter’s phenomenal baserunning and OBP heavy numbers. He’s not a top five or six, but to be honest when you’re talking about Ruth, Wagner, Cobb, Mantle, Mays, Hornsby, Gehrig, etc…here hasn’t really been a non-Bonds player in the past 40 years (Morgan’s the only one I can think of) that can come close to those guys. I mean, my top ten looks something like this:
Ruth
Bonds
Wagner
Cobb
Mantle
Williams
Mays
Speaker
Hornsby
Aaron
Guys like Gehrig, Musial, Eddie Collins, etc are left out…Pujols and Rodriguez may have a shot at top 20. Jeter doesn’t have a chance 5-6.
And let’s be honest: he’s marrying Minka Kelly. Babe Ruth couldn’t pull that one off.
Derek Jeter is almost never properly rated. A guy like Allen will write this nonsense, clearly overrating him, and a ton of people will go nuts about it. They’ll go rip on his defense, lack of power (vs. his early counterparts) and completely underrate him. Hell, I know I’ve been guilty of both over and underrating him throughout his career.