If you’re stupid and you know it clap your hands
This asshole is clapping hard right about now. His name is apparently Eric Adelson, and the thing he wants most in the world is a really sloppy blowjob from Derek Jeter. As an attempt to break the Captain’s ice, he’s offering up a written blowjob of his own, in this awful article about how the Ambassador’s Captain-y-ness is way more important than dorky shit like how good he is at baseball. It starts, promisingly enough, like this:
So the SABR rattlers have pronounced Derek Jeter old and creaky.
"SABR rattlers" is a really old, really awful joke. And you left out the part about how we all live in our mothers’ basements and drink a lot of Mountain Dew.
The captain’s average is average and his OBP is WTF.
I hope the law that requires macho he-men to do the acronym joke in every article complaining about those nerdy goddamn nerds and their fake-o stats never gets repealed. Though this is probably the nadir of the art form. Here’s a better one for next time, Irving: "maybe you nerds should see an OBP/GYN, because you’re giant pussies!"
The New York Yankees hit king was once the belle of the ball, but now he’s dragging along like a tin can behind a "Just Married" car.
See, this is exactly what I mean. When they’re not making the acronym joke, they’re actually finding ways to be even more retarded. Also: fantasy of Derek Jeter as beautiful woman + marriage-related Derek Jeter fantasy in the same sentence. Damn, dude.
The $50 million over three years he’s sure to get from the Yankees this winter is more like a Wall Street golden parachute than a worth-every-penny contract, at least if you listen to the stat wonks.
Hey, actually, the nerds hashed this out a while ago, as you’d know if you hadn’t dropped out of the University of Being Any Good At Your Job. You know what the consensus of the nerds was? 3/$45M.
And now you want a "golden parachute" from Jeter? This is getting out of hand.
They do have a point.
And they’re missing the point.
Jeter is not above the laws of age or numbers. His age will go up, his numbers will go down. Those are facts.
Wordplay: 1/10
Now you’re talking about "going down?" This article delivers! And if you’re already being porn-y, why couldn’t you at least use the phrase "hard-core facts?"
But just for a moment, let’s move past that. Let’s move past the huge contract he’ll sign and not statistically earn.
This year’s a wash, sure, but Fangraphs has Jeter being worth $64M over the last three years. You sure he won’t be worth $50M over the next three? Damn, I thought you had a giant hankerin’ for the Baseball Pope’s sceptre of office. Why are you hating on him all of a sudden?
Abandon All Stats Ye Who Enter Here. Because in one important way, Jeter is worth as much as ever.
Cock size?
Shut your eyes and think of a Jeter moment.
!
Maybe it’s the behind-the-back toss against Oakland. Maybe it’s him falling into the stands. Maybe it’s a home run against the Mets at Shea. But most likely it’s not a statistical moment.
Yeah, most likely it isn’t a statistical moment, because that is not a thing. And I think we all know what moment you’re thinking about.
It’s a moment when he did something that altered the arc and the feel of a postseason game.
I dunno, Isabel. The "arc" of a game? That sounds like the sort of shit you could affect with goddamn statistics — you know, like home runs and baserunner kills and shit like that. Better leave that part out and focus on how Jeter totally alters the feel of postseason games. Because if anything screams "pay me fifty million dollars," it’s a supernatural ability to alter game-feel!
Curtis Granderson’s shut-your-eyes moment came in 2006, when he lined up in centerfield as a Tiger in the ALDS. He looked in at Jeter and damned if it felt like Jeter was staring right back at him.
Which he may have been, since it kind of matters to him — the batter — where the fielders are positioned.
Oh, also, the Tigers won the 2006 ALDS. So maybe not the best possible example.
"It felt like he was thinking, ‘I’m going away from you,’ " Granderson said.
No! Don’t go away! I need you!
"I thought I was positioned right but at least two of his hits were just out of my reach."
There you have it. Derek Jeter’s super power: at least two of his hits don’t go straight to CF.
"And I thought, ‘That’s why they call him what they call him.’–"
The quotation in the article cuts off right there, with that trailing dash. Any guesses what Granderson said?
Yes, that was four years ago. Yes, Jeter’s hitting and fielding have eroded since.
"Eroded" don’t describe it. Jeter was a legitimate MVP candidate as recently as last year, when he hit .334 / .406 / .465 / .871 while being worth an astonishing 6.4 UZR. It was arguably the best year of his career. So, no, not "eroded." Maybe more "fell off a cliff," since this year he’s hitting .262 / .329 / .369 / .698 and defending for -6.8 UZR. Not really a trend so much as an abrupt drop, which is a thing you would know about if you didn’t have an irrational fear of knowledge.
But his postseasons haven’t yet.
Have there been postseasons yet this year? Because, if there have, I missed them entirely. So, while you are 100% totally correct, your sample size of zero fails to inspire confidence.
Jeter had 11 hits in the World Series last year – more than in any playoff series in his career. (Sorry – that was a stat.)
That’s okay; I forgive you. A few other things to consider:
• Derek Jeter bats first these days (he used to bat in the meat of the order), which gives him more PA, on average (though that particular World Series was only the third-most PA he’s ever had in a postseason series).
• Eight of Derek Jeter’s eleven hits in that series were singles. None were triples. None were home runs. He walked once.
• Derek Jeter finished third in MVP voting in 2009, because he was ridiculously good at baseball all year long.
So it’s okay that you used a stat — it was awful. Nobody’s understanding of baseball was improved.
Of course playoffs are a tiny sample size, but when you add up 28 postseason series – and all those moments – you get a bigger sample size. And that sample size speaks loudly to players even if the regular-season numbers are starting to rasp.
I agree. And you know what that sample size speaks — loudly! — to me? It speaketh this:
.313 / .383 / .479 / .863
Those are Jeter’s cumulative postseason stats. They’re not too bad, huh? Gee, I wonder what his regular-season stats look like.
.314 / .384 / .453 / .837
Oh, come the fuck on. That is exactly the same. His BA and OBP are seriously within one point of each other. Sometimes, you really look like an ass when you just assert things and don’t do any research, huh. But I wonder what Rays outfielder Carl Crawford thinks!
"You can’t put a price tag on him, man," Rays outfielder Carl Crawford said. "He’s Derek Jeter. It’s just one year! I had a bad year in ’08."
There’s a lot of fluff surrounding the kernel of value in there, which would be the sentence "it’s just one year!" However, there is something to note, here. When Crawford had a bad year, he was 26. Jeter is ten full years older than that. While we know bad luck has played a role in his shitty performance, there is legitimate question as to how much — his BABIP is sixty points off of his career average, which is a lot, but how much of that is just dumb idiot luck, and how much is what happens to hitters with severe groundball tendencies as their power and speed decay? This is an interesting question to think about. Or, in your case, to paper over with platitudes about CLURTCH and AURA and MANMEAT.
Crawford continued: "I remember one year he was struggling. I was thinking, ‘This is the year he’s not going to hit .300.’ I had my own doubts about him."
Crawford then took out his iPad and logged on to Baseball-Reference.com, which he has bookmarked. And lo and behold, in 2004, Jeter hit .379 in September and October to ramp his overall average up to .294.
And therefore… Crawford was right all along: Jeter did not hit .300 that year. So, uh, nice anecdote. You should probably get like an editor or something, though, because the exact web site you mention gives Jeter’s 2004 BA as .292, not .294. Also, it wasn’t the first year he didn’t hit .300. So, really, what the fuck was the point? To illustrate that Carl Crawford has an iPad?
OK, OK: The iPad thing didn’t happen.
In that case: what the fuck was the point?
The point is: "You keep playing to the end," Crawford said. "I remembered that year and I learned from it."
Oh. Nothing. Nothing was the point. You just interviewed Carl Crawford and wanted a chance to use all the words you wrote down.
If Crawford learned from it, imagine what the Yankees learned from it. And that brings us to Jeter’s consistency.
You mean like how he consistently hits better than .300 except for that year that he didn’t, and also the other years that he didn’t? Or maybe you mean his consistent fielding, which ranges from 6.4 to -17.9 UZR? Or his consistent refusal to move to third because, hey, holy shit is A-Rod a better defensive SS?
Not the consistency of his stats, but the consistency of his ways.
What? Derek Jeter is utterly notorious for changing his batting stance like every single week. His ways are famously inconsistent. At least you consistently don’t know what you’re talking about.
"He’s my all-time favorite player," Yankees outfielder Marcus Thames said.
Who gives a fuck? My wife’s all-time favourite player is David Segui. That doesn’t mean he’s good.
"So his numbers are not up. You wouldn’t know it. He seems fine to me."
Of course he seems fine to you — he’s your all-time favourite player. You are not what we would consider a disinterested party. Also, yeah, I would know it — the fact that he’s not getting on base any more (which is not a magical fairy concept Bill James invented in a lab, but, like, an observable fact about the game of baseball, which you may have heard of) and that his power is completely fucking gone kind of makes it noticeable. Especially if he’s going to be batting first.
"He’s a helluva leader. I check him out to see how he handles things. Every single night, he wants to win."
"Unlike some dumb orange fucker who shall remain nameless, who only wants to win on select nights."
Jeter says he’s never changed a thing about his game.
I’m assuming he means "except for his batting stance," because, seriously, he changes that all the damn time.
Never unwound his swing, never altered his preparation. Never tinkered at all. Cal Ripken, Jr., the model of consistency in the modern era, repeatedly changed his batting stance. But not Jeter. Not even during this rough patch.
What?
I’m not even kidding. In all of baseball history, the player most famous for repeatedly changing his batting stance is none other than Derek Sanderson Jeter. Do you know anything at all about the game of baseball?
"Baseball is baseball," Jeter said Tuesday on the night of his 2,279th regular season game. "The game doesn’t change. If you try to change things, you’re in trouble."
Sounds like Jeter’s going to be an excellent bitter old commentator when his playing days end!
It’s easy to be steady when you bat .300 every year.
Unlike Derek Jeter, who does not.
Hell, even a superstitious worrywart can do that.
Which is good, since that’s all baseball players ever. Except for J.D. Drew, who has no fire and no balls and certainly no balls of fire and probably not even a single Delayed Blast Fireball.
But the fact that Jeter hasn’t changed this season is a new kind of leadership – one that reaches even further.
Yeah: the kind of leadership that focuses on ignoring your problems until they go away. Or until it’s September, and, holy shit, you’re only batting .262 / .329 / .369 and now I guess it’s too late to do anything about it, huh.
There’s nothing to empirically prove consistency of method is a good thing, but it certainly must settle nerves when Jeter acts the exact same way in November as he does in March.
A-Rod, meanwhile, spends the summer as a centaur, but then becomes a yeti for the colder autumn months. And in the winter? He turns into a xorn and burrows into Bob Costas’ hairpiece to hibernate.
If the Yankees are down 0-2 in a series, or if a teammate gets caught up in a scandal,
— cough, A-Rod, cough —
or if the team gives up a six-run lead to the first-place Rays (as the Yankees did Tuesday night) after losing four straight games, Jeter is going to be Jeter. How many other players are like that?
How many other players are Jeter when that happens? I dunno. Maybe Michael Young?
How many other players have the exact same unafraid look in their eyes every single at-bat?
J.D. Drew sure does. And everybody hates him for it.
So next year, maybe Jeter will bat lower in the lineup, or hit .250, or play the outfield.
Jeter’s not far off from .250 this year. And the outfield? Holy shit no. Dude wouldn’t move to third; what makes you think he’ll move to the outfield?
But when October comes, every teammate will know Jeter has seen it all before.
Well, yeah. He’ll be 37. Every Padre knows that David Eckstein has seen it all before, but that doesn’t make him — oh, wait, you probably think he is awesome, huh. Fuck you.
And October seems to always come for the Yankees, even with Jeter in a slump.
Except when it doesn’t. Like in 2008.
The Yankees can afford pay younger players for the regular season. They will pay Jeter for October. They will pay him for the moment, and for the moments.
What? I don’t even understand what that means. I mean, no, they won’t just… pay Jeter for October. They’ll pay him for the whole year. The union will cause them some trouble otherwise, yeah?
The stats have changed. They may never change back. But Jeter himself hasn’t changed. Maybe that isn’t worth a boatload on the open market.
But it’s worth a fortune to the Yankees.
On the open market, Jeter would be likely to get about 3/$45M. Which is exactly what he’s expected to get from the Yankees. Didn’t we say that two thousand words ago?
You’re bad at your job.
