Throughout his 20 years in the big leagues, there were just three occasions when the league didn’t have Jeter participating in the postseason: 2008, 2013, and 2014. And sure, he won just one more the rest of his career (in 2009), but with Jeter on the Yankees, it was nearly a certainty New York would be playing October baseball. After his first five full seasons with the Yankees, he had already won four World Series titles. It’s hard to start an MLB career better than Derek Jeter did based on team accomplishments. Don’t forget about Jeter’s postseason resume and intangibles Only Larkin’s 198 came in below Jeter, and the fellow Hall of Famer had about 2,500 fewer plate appearances in the process. Ripken’s 92.5 fWAR is the only one higher than Jeter’s (73.1), and the New York legend accomplished this without leaning on home runs a ton. Jeter also had the highest batting average and on-base percentage, tied with Larkin for the highest wOBA, and posted a 119 wRC+ that was the best of the bunch. While he was the only one to post a negative defensive rating throughout his career, he scored the most runs and nearly beat out Larkin for the most stolen bases (379 to 358). Among this subgroup of players, Jeter racked up the second-most games played (2,747) and plate appearances (12,602). To put his work in proper perspective, I thought it’d be interesting to compare Jeter’s offensive production to three other Hall of Fame shortstops.įellow shortstops that come to mind for this include Cal Ripken Jr., Barry Larkin, and Ernie Banks. He’s also part of the 3,000-hit club, with his 3,465 base hits ranking sixth all-time. The 14-time All-Star had a career slash line of. It’s easy to look at Derek Jeter’s cumulative offensive numbers and see how good he was with the bat in his hands. How significant were Derek Jeter’s offensive abilities? While he certainly underwent a lot of growth from his first full pro season in Greensboro, this is usually a sticking point for many critics of Jeter. He said in the first episode of The Captain that he was proud to never man another position as an MLB player. Jeter’s DRS value was worse than -10 on nine different occasions. The only two times he didn’t produce a negative number came in 2003 (zero) and 2009 (three). And that was just from 2002, when DRS began to be tracked, to the end of Jeter’s career. So, for him to go from that as a 19-year-old minor leaguer to winning five Gold Gloves (including three in a row from 2004-06) is a huge accomplishment.īut when it comes to advanced defensive metrics, a much different picture is painted for the 20-year MLB vet.įanGraphs’ defensive runs saved (DRS) metric was especially unkind, giving him a value of -162 runs. This was the highest number of errors committed by one player during a single season in league history. 295/.376/.394 in 128 games played, but he also committed 56 errors at shortstop. As he mentioned in his ESPN documentary, The Captain, the only thing he ever wanted to do was play shortstop for the Yankees.īut even for someone in his position, baseball has a way of humbling players in one way or another.įor The Captain himself, that happened just about immediately as a 19-year-old in the South Atlantic League. Derek Jeter’s defense didn’t help him get into Cooperstown Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees throws to first base against the Texas Rangers on J| by Rick Yeatts/Getty Imagesĭuring the 1992 MLB Draft, Derek Jeter was the first high school player off the board once the Yankees took him with the sixth overall pick. Let’s dig into that a little more before showing how he made up for it - and more - at the plate to become the first-ballot Hall of Famer he is. This is ironic because when looking at some of Jeter’s advanced statistics, his defensive play at shortstop is among … the worst. Those two plays have been on defensive highlight reels for the better part of the last two decades. There’s also the image many fans remember of him catching a pop-up and landing in the stands at the old Yankee Stadium. He made it to Cooperstown mostly because of his offensive accomplishments, yet two of the most iconic images from his playing days came from when he was playing defense.Īnytime an infielder executes a jump-throw, the first thought many diehard baseball fans have (even if they hate the New York Yankees) is of Jeter. The legendary shortstop appeared on 99.7% of BBWAA ballots. That’s verified by the five-time World Series champion getting enshrined at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, on the first try. Derek Jeter put together one of the most impactful MLB careers of anyone in his generation.
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