Jeter: Where Does He Rank Among All-Time Greats?

Just Manky being Manky. Delusional fanboy or troll playing a role? Either way, nothing he types is relevant to anything.

 

Agreed. Jeter is a Hall of Famer without question or debate, but he might not even be on the list of top five Yankees of all-time.

 

YOU BITE YOUR TONGUE!

 

Not a big fan either, but I respect the hell out of him for what he has accomplished and he is a no-doubt HOFer. And he is also overrated. That does sound odd doesn't it?

 

Doesn't sound that odd at all, it's quite on point.

Definitely a hall of famer, no question. But his current fame benefits from a few big things:
1) Being a lifelong Yankee, he gets a huge bump with that. If he spent his entire career with the Cleveland Indians, he's Kirby Pucket and not getting a season-long slurp job of a farewell tour (Still have no idea why teams like the Cubs gave him a big send off when he visited Wrigley this year, only played the team a couple of times).

2) Being clean through the steroid era, no huge slugger to really rally around right now, has the image and charisma baseball wants -- he's the anti-A-Rod/Bonds/etc.

3) He is an accumulator, and there is nothing wrong with that, but his highs were never astronomically high (never an MVP) and his lows were never disastrously low (his WARs were discussed earlier in this thread). Let me put it another way, Ron Francis is fourth all-time in points in the NHL with 1,798, but he also played 23 seasons and in 1,731 games -- hall of famer, great guy, clean cut, two Stanley Cups, but no one has him anywhere near a top 10 list of all-time greats, you'd be hard pressed, I think, to find him on most top 50 lists.

4) The intangibles. Yes important, but can be vastly overrated. The fact he has a good relationship with the media and the fans, he gets a lot of play out of it and helps build his mystique.

He was never a very good defender, and I know some have him -- as previously mentioned -- historically bad. He has two trademark plays, one where flies into the stands to make a catch, the other where I am still convinced the runner beat the throw at home -- have yet to see a replay that convinces me otherwise. Still they do not cover up for a career of sub-par play at the position.

He was also never the best player on his team, often one of the best, but not top dog. In his prime there were players like Clemens, Giambi, Matsui, Tino Martinez, Bernie Williams and others in later years there were several others who took that mantle like A-Rod or Cano.
This also meant he never was the best player in the league at any one time, let alone runaway best shortstop in the game -- both critical points in considering the greatest of all time.

His best attribute -- outside of his longevity and consistency -- may be his play in the post-season, because he was mostly clutch, and I give him full credit for that.

Again, hall of famer? absolutely, first ballot. Among the greatest of all time? Nowhere near a top 10 overall, MAYBE top 10 at shortstop, but I honestly haven't thought that deeply about that list, but if for vast swaths of his career he didn't play the defensive position particularly well then I do have a hard time putting him ahead of players like Ripken and Banks who may have also played considerable time at other positions.

 

Where the hell is Clay Bellinger on that list?

 

Re: no MVPs ...

He could have won it in '99 but 3 things worked against him: 1) a year in which a catcher (I-Rod) clearly went above and beyond, 2) Pedro, and 3) we were just a year removed from the Great Chase of '98 so you can see why the usual suspects voted for Manny and Palmeiro ahead of him. Alomar also finished ahead of him (well ahead) which seems strange because show me where the numbers diverge. Still not as strange as Jeter finishing 2nd to Morneau in '06.

Code:

                                                                                                                                                           
                                                     Voti                                               Batt                                           Pitc
Rank                Name  Tm Vote Pts 1st Place Share WAR   G  AB   R   H HR RBI SB  BB   BA  OBP  SLG   OPS    W L  ERA  WHIP  G GS SV    IP   H HR BB  SO
1         Ivan Rodriguez TEX    252.0       7.0   64% 6.4 144 600 116 199 35 113 25  24 .332 .356 .558                                                 .914
2         Pedro Martinez BOS    239.0       8.0   61% 9.7  31   2   0   0  0   0  0   0 .000 .000 .000  .000   23 4 2.07 0.923 31 29  0 213.1 160  9 37 313
3         Roberto Alomar CLE    226.0       4.0   58% 7.4 159 563 138 182 24 120 37  99 .323 .422 .533                                                 .955
3          Manny Ramirez CLE    226.0       4.0   58% 7.3 147 522 131 174 44 165  2  96 .333 .442 .663                                                1.105
5        Rafael Palmeiro TEX    193.0       4.0   49% 5.2 158 565  96 183 47 148  2  97 .324 .420 .630                                                1.050
6            Derek Jeter NYY    177.0       1.0   45% 8.0 158 627 134 219 24 102 19  91 .349 .438 .552                                                 .989
7      Nomar Garciaparra BOS    137.0       0.0   35% 6.6 135 532 103 190 27 104 14  51 .357 .418 .603                                                1.022
8           Jason Giambi OAK     49.0       0.0   12% 5.9 158 575 115 181 33 123  1 105 .315 .422 .553                                                 .975
9            Shawn Green TOR     44.0       0.0   11% 6.4 153 614 134 190 42 123 20  66 .309 .384 .588                                                 .972
10           Ken Griffey SEA     42.0       0.0   11% 4.9 160 606 123 173 48 134 24  91 .285 .384 .576                                                 .960
11       Bernie Williams NYY     21.0       0.0    5% 5.4 158 591 116 202 25 115  9 100 .342 .435 .536                                                 .971
12        Carlos Delgado TOR     16.0       0.0    4% 3.6 152 573 113 156 44 134  1  86 .272 .377 .571                                                 .948
13         Juan Gonzalez TEX     10.0       0.0    3% 3.9 144 562 114 183 39 128  3  51 .326 .378 .601                                                 .980
14        Mariano Rivera NYY      9.0       0.0    2% 3.5  66   0   0   0  0   0  0                        0    4 3 1.83 0.884 66  0 45  69.0  43  2 18  52
15        Alex Rodriguez SEA      4.0       0.0    1% 4.7 129 502 110 143 42 111 21  56 .285 .357 .586                                                 .943
16          Omar Vizquel CLE      3.0       0.0    1% 6.0 144 574 112 191  5  66 42  65 .333 .397 .436                                                 .833
17           Matt Stairs OAK      2.0       0.0    1% 1.7 146 531  94 137 38 102  2  89 .258 .366 .533                                                 .899
18             John Jaha OAK      1.0       0.0    0% 4.6 142 457  93 126 35 111  2 101 .276 .414 .556                                                 .970
18          B.J. Surhoff BAL      1.0       0.0    0% 5.1 162 673 104 207 28 107  5  43 .308 .347 .492                                                 .839

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/21/2014.

 

The year he could have, and probably should have won it was 2006 when Morneau got the MVP. I agree he's somewhat overrated by some, but the backlash here is a bit much. Clemens as a Yankee was never better than him, the Cy Young year included. Neither was Matsui.

 

Some of the backlash may be a bit much, but so was putting him at #5 all time. I looked at Musial, Ted Williams, and DiMaggio below Jeter and I was like "WTF?".

 

To be fair, that's just Manky being Manky and he is best just ignored.

 

Lifetime WAR:

Jeter 71.7 /2740 G
Lou Whitaker 74. 9 /2390 G
Alan Trammell 70.4 /2293 G