Jeter, Not A-Rod, Was the Selfish One

The Captain doesn’t deserve the positive comparisons to #13.

And now, at long last, we’ve reached the end of Alex Rodriguez’s storied career.

It’s appropriate it should go out with a whimper, with the front office of the Yankees working to make the end of a GOAT player’s time on the field as weak as possible. That’s been half of the story of Rodriguez’s Yankees career.

The other half, and one we’ve seen on display today and all week, has been unfavorable comparisons to media darling and former Yankee Captain Derek Jeter.

Jeter’s already entered the Yankee pantheon of greats, deserved or no. Where Rodriguez is seen as self-serving, Jeter is seen as the consummate team player and thoroughly invested in the success of the franchise, even at his own expense.

The problem with this interpretation of both men is that it’s total bullshit.

It’s Rodriguez who has always been the team player and Jeter who has always been the one consumed by his own brand.

I know, I know. Give me a chance to prove my point, though.

In 2004, when the Yankees traded for Rodriguez, Jeter was the everyday shortstop. Coming into the 2004 season, Jeter made it clear he would under no circumstances move off of short for the immeasurably superior Rodriguez.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at their relative fielding stats:

Excluding their early years, for Rodriguez 1994 and 1995, and Jeter 1995 (neither played more than 50 games in those years), the two have almost identical fielding percentages. Rodriguez has an average edge of roughly .975 while Jeter has .972. Jeter had a total of 130 errors in that time, Rodriguez came in at 109 overall for the same years.

Over at Pinstripe Alley, Chris Mitchell put this better than I can in 2014, so I’ll quote from him extensively:

Jeter’s bat was a key cog in the Yankees’ lineup during the dynasty era, but he gave much of that value back on the other side of the ball. His offense was worth 163 runs above average from 1996–2001, but he was 66 runs worse than the average shortstop. After adjusting for position, that made him roughly 20 runs worse than the average fielder….

Per UZR, A-Rod was the best shortstop in baseball from 2002–2003, putting up an impressive +24 UZR — leaps and bounds better than Jeter’s -4 mark. On defense alone, A-Rod was worth something like two wins more than Jeter before he made the switch to the hot corner.

Mitchell includes this helpful graph which lays out the difference pretty starkly:

Now, a real team player- a captain, even- would have taken one look at the disparate talent between himself and the new guy and said:

“Gee, Mr. Steinbrenner, you should probably move me off shortstop to make way for the better player to take the position, for the good of the team!”

But instead, the real team player signed with the team and didn’t put up a fuss when they moved him to third base so a far inferior player could continue to middle at short. Jeter’s improvement in fielding stats after Rodriguez moved to third isn’t a result of a late career resurgence, either — it’s the result of having a superior defensive player to his right and shortening his range.

Fast forward to the last two years and we see, again, the difference in how the two men act.

In 2014, Jeter insisted on a farewell tour to rival Mariano Rivera’s (I like to imagine Jeter stomping into the front office and throwing a lie-down, screaming, can’t breathe tantrum about it until Hal relented).

Jeter insisted on batting at the top of the lineup, despite a dismal slash line, and further insisted he be allowed to start at shortstop, though his already dismal defense had gotten worse. It’s in no small part because of this that the Yankees failed to make the playoffs for the second year in a row- but hey, at least Jeets got his send off.

Compare that to how Rodriguez has behaved in the last year. He’s been nothing but the perfect teammate and player, always willing to do whatever was asked of him by management or the front office, playing when asked, not complaining when he was benched for weeks…. And then, in the last four games of his career as a Yankee, Manager Joe Girardi- who played Jeter at short and gave him copious at-bats in 2014- refused to start Rodriguez at third and bat him in two of the games.

My hope is that Rodriguez signs with a team for a friendly, cheap five year deal and finishes his career out somewhere where he’s respected.

But my real hope is that the day the Yankees decide to retire number 2 in honor of Jeter- one of the more mediocre shortstops of the past three decades- that’s the day Alex Rodriguez breaks the home run record.

Edit to add, May 14, 2017: Obviously that didn’t happen.

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