Mike Harrington of THE BUFFALO NEWS is baffled at one of SI.com’s latest polls, which asked: Who is the game’s most overrated player? Derek Jeter was the answer, but Harrington says look at the numbers.
Come on. We’re only talking about perhaps the finest all-around shortstop of a generation and a player who will finish his career with more hits than any New York Yankee in history. More than Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio. All of them.
Now, you can certainly make the case this season has not been a vintage Jeter year, especially April and May. And he turned 34 on Thursday — 34! — so his range at shortstop is not what it once was.
But according to the Elias Sports Bureau, Jeter’s team has the highest winning percentage among all active players who have appeared in at least 1,000 games (.601). That counts pretty high in my book.
No coincidence the Yankees’ new dynasty began in 1996, Jeter’s rookie year. And while the Yankees have been a postseason flop since blowing the 2004 ALCS, they keep going back. You get that perspective when you spend three days in a city with a team like the Pirates, who haven’t even been above .500 since 1992.
While the Yankees’ June resurgence is largely credited to the return from the disabled list of Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada, Jeter’s play has been a pretty big boost too. Jeter entered Saturday’s game with the Mets with mundane numbers for the season (.285 average, .345 on-base, .397 slugging) but he’s really turned it on of late. He was on a 15-game hitting streak and his June numbers were .316/.391/.459.
People either hate Jeter because he plays for the Yankees or the fact that he’s often referred to of the golden child of baseball. Calling him overrated is laughable. He might not hit a ton of home runs and his RBI numbers are usually low because of where he bats in the order, but the guy gives himself up on every play in every game. He’s also one of the most clutch players this generation has ever seen and I’d take his leadership in the clubhouse any day. Stat freaks like to hammer him, but watch Jeter play on a regular basis and then tell me he’s overrated.
