I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End
You all know what I’m talking about.
Have you heard the shocking but true news? The Yankees and Derek Jeter have yet to agree to terms! The horror… the horror. For some weird reason, I guess a lot of people expected this negotiation to go pretty quickly; maybe they figured that, hey, the Yankees should just give him whatever he wants, since he’s the heart and soul of the free world and also he redeemed us for our sins.
The only problem with that theory, of course, is what it is that he wants: six years and $150 million. That’s a lot for a 36-year-old shortstop coming off the worst year of his career — consider that, by the time it’s over, he’ll be a 42-year-old designated hitter. The Yankees, meanwhile, have countered by offering what we at Fangraphs collectively declared would be the market offer: 3/$45M. So there’s a lot of middle ground there to make up.
One’s first thought coming into this has to be that, if Jeter’s free agent year had been last year, he’d have gotten his 6/$150M no problem. Unfortunately (from Jeter’s perspective, which is also God’s perspective), he had a shitty year in between his awesome 6.5-win year and his payday. And that cost him a ton of leverage. Looking at his numbers reveals that his BABIP was fifty points off his career average, which is something to consider. Also worth noting, however, is that he still overperformed expected BABIP by twenty points. Derek Jeter is historically a BABIP overperformer, which (if I had to guess) is almost definitely because he’s an extreme groundball hitter with plus speed. Fangraphs hasn’t noticed a decline in Jeter’s speed, so it seems likely he’ll bounce back next season (Bill James predicts that he will, expecting that he’ll make about 700 PA with a .344 wOBA, which is really really good for a shortstop; probably in 4 WAR territory, depending on his defense).
Of course, Jeter isn’t the only party to this negotiation whose leverage sucks. The Yankees don’t have shit to deal from either, and they know it. If they hold hard and Jeter walks, then what the hell do they do? Try to coax Edgar Renteria out of retirement and hope he can maintain his 2010 production of 1.3 WAR and not regress to his 0.3 2009 form? Frankly, the Yankees need Jeter for more reasons than just his undeniable sexy sex appeal.
So here’s what I think is going to happen. Both sides will keep up the tough-guy routine for another month or so, and we’ll hear Casey Close announce that he’s had some "interesting offers" from teams he won’t name (to protect their privacy, of course). Meanwhile, the Yankees will make a halfhearted effort to woo Jason Bartlett or some scrub like that. Then, around the end of the year (or maybe early January), the Yanks will come up with a new offer that’s a bit bigger than their current offer, and the Jeter camp will pretend to "think it over" for, like, a day. Then they’ll make some tiny little demand and the Yanks will agree, and both sides get to claim they "won" the negotiations.
What kind of deal are we looking at? Well, Jeter’s been pretty clear: he wants a long deal and $25M/year. He ain’t gettin’ either, though. But the Yanks will have to go a bit longer on the contract than the three they’re offering; I expect they’ll end up giving him four and a team option for a fifth. They won’t go up to $25M/year, which is crazy money for a four-win player, but they’ll probably nudge their $15M up a little bit, to $18M or so. So I’m thinking the offer the Yankees will make will be 4/$70M, with a team option for a fifth year at $15M. The Jeter camp will probably counter by demanding that the option vest if certain goofy criteria are met — given Jeter’s skillset, probably it’ll be something like 750 hits.
So that’s my prediction. We all know how good I am at predicting, too! So good that I honestly just checked to see if he’d signed while I was typing this. Just to be sure.
