BomberBanter.com

If you’re like me and you’re avoiding the New York Times’ pay wall, then you can only view Ben Shipigel’s article “Under a Microscope, Jeter Has a Powerless Start” for free until you view some amount of particular pages on their website – beyond that, you have to pay a fee.  I don’t have a problem with the Times going to a hybrid free/pay model for their website, but the model is bassackwards.  I love the NY Times and would pay to use their site – but a one year subscription is too spicy a meatball.  At $195, $260 or $455 a year (depending on how many different devices you want to use to access their site – which is an AWFUL pricing model, by they way), the yearly fees are just too high.  Also, if you pay for a month a la cart, it’s only $15… that doesn’t make any sense!  If you pay in advance for a whole year, you pay more than if you pay per month.  That’s effing bull shiz!  You can find a ton of information about this on their announcement page, but try to find out the pricing structure from their digital subscription page – again, a bunch of nonsense!

Kind of like the title of Mr. Shipigel’s article:  Jeter has a powerless start?  When one says ‘power’ applied to baseball, this generally means extra base hits, but most people immediately think of home runs.  The most home runs Jeter ever hit in a season is 24, which is great for a short stop, but in over all baseball performance, nothing to write home about.  During Jeter’s career, he’s averaged almost 14 home runs per season, which is again, fine for a short stop, but something a power hitter would be ashamed of.  See, the thing is Derek Jeter ISN’T A POWER HITTER, SO WHEN YOU TITLE YOUR ARTICLE, ‘JETER HAS A POWERLESS START,’ IT MAKES YOU SOUND LIKE AN EFFING SHIZ HEAD!

I wouldn’t usually go out of my way to point out ridiculous headlines in newspapers (hell, the New York Post and the Daily News have made a business model out of it!), but the New York Times is a BRILLIANT newspaper, and I expect a little more, hold them to a higher standard – and this headline is just weak sauce.

But I digress; I think the point that got lost in the headline is that Jeter has the highest ground-ball percentage of any player in baseball at 81.3, and it’s a serious issue.  That I totally agree with.  I hate to go all stat style on you, but let’s take a look at some simple stats for Jeter’s 2011 season so far.  NOTE:  looking at stats for 100 bats is a small sample size and is not worth using to make a serious judgment, but since every media outlet on earth has decided to make a federal case out of Derek Jeter’s bat, let’s take a look.  And Mr. Shipigel’s article seems to be aware of all this, including the scrutiny.  And he closed his article with “He might also like to recall what happened in April 2004, when he endured a 1-for-36 slide and ended the month hitting .168. By the All-Star break that July, he was batting .277.”  So the article isn’t an attack on Jeter…  honestly, I don’t know what it is.

Obviously, the .250 batting average and a .310 on base percentage is not what we expect from Derek Jeter.  I wouldn’t say .250 is terrible, but it’s certainly not good.  And yes, I get that batting average is an over rated and over used stat, but I still don’t think that makes it a bad one.

Meanwhile, here’s table of all MLB shortstops with 50 or more plate appearances so far this year.  I was only able to get batting average, but whatever…

Derek Jeter ranks 13th of out of the 35 short stops with 50 or more plate appearances so far this year…  that doesn’t make .250 a great batting average (small sample size!), but it says that for his position, Jeter’s production isn’t too bad.

If you want to point out something troubling about Derek Jeter at the plate, it’s not only the fact that he’s hitting a lot of balls on the ground, but where – to short stop, or at least the left side of the infield.  This tells me that he’s cheating his swing – meaning that he’s starting his swing early to catch up to fastballs.  (It may also mean that he’s seeing more off speed pitches, like curve balls and change ups, so he’s ahead of these pitches, thinking they’re fastballs – the Yankees seem to be seeing more curve balls this year…)  In the days of Mr. November and what-not, we all know that Jeter would hit the ball in the air, preferably over the second baseman’s head, the so-called Jeterian swing that hit the ball the other way.  So if he was grounding to second base, I would tend to think that Jeter’s career was in serious jeopardy, but since he’s pulling the ball to the left side of the infield, I tend to think his issues are mechanical.  I don’t think this means he’ll revert back to his prime when the weather improves, but I think we can expect better than .250 production from him.

Frankly, we’re going to have to do this again in early June, so this whole post has been an exercise in futility anyway!