Oswalt to Phils? ... The trade-deadline thread

and captain comparison clutches up with his usual BS.

 

And the Yankee faithful continue to prove me right. Some of them just can't be taken seriously when Jeter is the subject. Sorry, 93Devil. You're way off here.

As RickStain pointed out, nobody said the Yankees should get rid of Jeter. That ridiculous part one of saying the posts here were akin to the Twins trading Mauer.

Also, Mauer is having a down year by his own high standards. Yet he is still batting .313 with a .382 on-base percentage while slugging .468. Jeter is batting .274 with a .335 on-base percentage and .386 slugging, not nearly good enough numbers to justify his spot in the order.

More importantly, Jeter is 36 years old, definitely an age where you can't assume that this is a slump. It is very likely that the steady decline has begun and he will never get back to where he was in 2009. Denial ain't just a river, Yankee fans. Time to wake up and hope your team is smart enough to do the same come contract negotiation time this offseason.

 

A steady decline that began last year when he had 212 hits, batted .334 and had an OBP of .406?

He's been the first to admit he's not having a good year, but he's also earned the chance to turn things around without getting dropped to eighth like a player who shuttles between the bigs and Triple-A.

 

And the delusions continue. He's 36. Old enough that a red flag should go up for any reasonable person that perhaps this year is the start of the decline rather than just a four-month slump.

But y'all just keep fooling yourselves.

 

Maybe Jeter will turn it around. But I don't like the idea that a player has "earned" the right to suck for 3/4ths of a season. This is still a meritocracy.

 

Jeter's been up and down all season. He'll have a hot streak over five or six games to raise his average like 12 points and then he goes ice cold for a week to be two points below where he started the hot streak.

 

Damn and I thought I didn't like Jeter. OOP's Schadenfreude is off the charts here.

 

I guess I must have dreamed those numbers last year.

Is his performance thus far a red flag? At his age, absolutely. But if it is more than just a bad first half, it is hardly a steady decline as you keep talking about. It's a precipitous drop, which isn't as common for a player like Jeter as it is for a power hitter.

Given his history, it is much more likely that he simply had a bad first half and will turn it around than it is that he's completely done as a top-of-the-lineup hitter.

In six of the last 10 seasons Jeter has batted at least 30 points higher in the second half than he did in the first (including the last two when he went .284/.324 in '08 and .321/.345 in '09). In nine of his 14 full seasons in the bigs he has had a better second half than first. So there's certainly precedent in his career to come back and have a big second half.

Given all of that, is it really wise to drop him to eighth and bat Gardner leadoff?

Would you have demoted Mariano Rivera to the eighth-inning role and made Chamberlain the closer in 2008 after Rivera had four losses and an ERA of 3.15 and Chamberlain electrified the city in 2007? Because you would have been wrong if you did.

Sorry, but there are guys who have to prove they CAN'T play anymore before you give up on them.

 

The precipitous drop is *very* common for middle infielders. One day, their legs just hit the wall.

 

This debate continues to beg an obvious question. Given the Yanks' record, why should they consider altering their lineup, especially in such a dramatic and controversial way? Any of you guys hear about the advisability of standing on 17?

 

bigpern, who said anything about giving up on them? But I get it. Dare suggest Jeter may have lost even a step and some people just can't stand it.

No, I would not have removed Rivera from the role at that time. No way Chamberlain had shown enough to warrant the switch from Rivera and I don't think age is nearly as large of a factor with closers.

BYH, Schadenfreude has nothing to do with it. I do get very tired of the Yankee faithful kissing Jeter's ring at all times rather than looking at the reality. He has proven that he is willing to put himself before the team more than once, but they won't hear it. When a player his age has his numbers drop this much over a four-month period, it is time to consider the strong possibility that they are not coming all the way back up. But to the faithful, that is pure blasphemy.

I'm going to laugh my ass off if Yankee management is just as foolish and gives him over $20 million a year this offseason.

 

For as much as you knock people for not being "able to stand it" when you suggest that Jeter has lost a step, I think it's funny that you refuse to acknowledge the numbers that suggest that perhaps he's not done.

As I said, it is a red flag that a player at his age is having a down year (so far), which is far from the hysterical denials you seem to be insinuating here. But you don't even acknowledge that more often than not in his career Jeter has hit better in the second half than in the first. And more often than not over the past decade, he has hit SIGNIFICANTLY better in the second half.

My feeling is, given his history, given his m.o. over the past decade, I need to see him really struggle for more than just the first half before I'm dropping him in the order. He'd need to finish this season around .270 or worse and struggle through two full months next year before I'd consider it.

The Rivera example, I think, is a good one. While YOU don't consider age to be a factor among closers, the fact that virtually no elite closers remain elite for more than six years (many have just a two- or three-year run) made it easy for people to question whether Rivera could continue to be dominant. He's the type of player that has to prove that he CAN'T get it done before anyone should say he's done.

I count Jeter in that class. Only time will tell, but it isn't nearly as unreasonable as you make it seem to believe that Jeter can still be productive at the top of the lineup.