Why I Find the "Overrated Baseball Players" List Amusing

There was a whole to-do yesterday over four Yankees being named to Sports Illustrated's poll of the Most Overrated MLB players, with Alex Rodriguez, Joba Chamberlain, and Derek Jeter taking the top three spots, and Nick Swisher tying Jayson Werth and Jonathan Papelbon for fourth place.

And for once, A-Rod, the "winner" of the contest voted on by his peers, outdid Derek Jeter, No. 3 on the list, when it came to handling negative attention with a smile and a laugh. For that matter, Joba Chamberlain, who came in second, said all the right things, too. Jeter, not so much.

Here's the scoop. Erik Boland of Newsday describes the scene in the clubhouse yesterday, with Joba, who "won" the title last year, teasing A-Rod about it:

"I lost," Chamberlain proclaimed for the rest of the clubhouse to hear. "I got beat out. No. 2, though...I guess I passed the torch on to Alex."


Upon seeing Rodriguez enter the clubhouse, Chamberlain, surrounded by reporters, yelled at the third baseman.


"You’re next Al, you’re next!"

Here's how A-Rod reacted:

Rodriguez smiled for almost the entirety of the time he spent talking about the anonymous poll.


"I’ve been on this list before," A-Rod said before pausing and taking note of 3/5 of the list comprising Yankees. "So it’s three Yankees? So I’ll see you guys next summer again."


Rodriguez also poked fun at his past reasons for making headlines.


Players vote?


"I’m sure I’ll be on it next summer so I’ll try to come up with some better material for you guys," he said.   "But, I will say this. If this is the only thing we’re talking about, fellas, we’re doing good."

 Here was Jeter's reaction, which wasn't quite so jovial:

Jeter was not close to being amused.


"We're doing this again?" he said. "I have no comment on anonymous polls. I've never understood those anonymous polls."


He added: "It's the same thing they do every year, right? I'm focused on more positive things. How about that? There's your quote."


Discussing his chase of 3,000 hits later on, Jeter amended that.


"Consistency is underrated," he said, putting emphasis on "underrated." "That's the quote."

Jeter usually has the right thing to say, as in saying nothing while saying something, but I thought he came off as really cranky here. This poll, voted on by 185 MLB players, is the quintessential example of the "you're just jealous" sentiment. Yankees win every year (Jeter was just as perturbed when he "won" the honor a few years back), because players are jealous of the attention and money they get.

Jayson Werth is on the list this year because he's making a ton of money with the Washington Nationals, and others are envious of his money. Nick Swisher is on the list because of his fame, endorsements, and probably jealousy about his TV-star wife. I would like to think that Jonathan Papelbon is on the list for being annoying, but his inclusion is most likely about jealousy, too. Any player who is on this list ought to consider it a badge of honor, quite frankly. A-Rod and Chamberlain took it in that spirit, while Jeter was peeved.

At any rate, Jeter's talk of his "consistency" is no longer applicable to his career, unless you consider consistently hitting .257 over the past year, with just seven homers, as a good thing. From the start of his career, until May 31, 2010, he put up the following stats:

.317 BA .387 OBP .458 Slug .845 OPS

Here are his stats from June 1, 2010 through yesterday:

.257 BA .333 OBP .336 Slug .670 OPS

Yikes!

So Now That Derek Jeter Had a Good Day, It's Time to Start Bashing A-Rod Again

Since Derek Jeter looked like the old Jeter this weekend for basically the first time since last spring, some of New York's reporters are back to griping about Alex Rodriguez again.

Never mind that Jeter's struggles have been going on from mid-June to the present, while Rodriguez started out the season on a tear, but has been hitting poorly over the last two weeks, since straining his oblique. As Mark Feinsand notes, Rodriguez  hit ".366 with four home runs and 10 RBI in his first 13 games," but although he did hit a grand slam and drive in six runs on April 23, "over his past 14 games, A-Rod is batting .170 (9-for-53) with three RBI and one extra-base hit." The Daily News writer says, "With his RBI groundout on Sunday, he snapped an eight-game skid in which he hadn't driven in a run."

It depends on your perspective whether Rodriguez is suffering a temporary setback, or an age-related decline.

George King of the New York Post writes:

While Rodriguez wasn’t the only non-producer, he hits fourth, makes the most money, has the out-sized personality and is the lightning rod for everything wrong in the Yankees’ universe.

Until Jeter started to warm this past week, his plate woes provided cover for Rodriguez, who batted .290 with five homers and 18 RBIs in April.

Let me get out my trusty calculator. Those stats over the course of six months would equal .290 over the year, with 30 home runs and 108 RBIs. Are those type of numbers something that would really kill the Yankees' season?

Kevin Long and Rodriguez told the media that the hitting coach noticed something awry this weekend with A-Rod's leg kick. But Wallly Matthews figures Rodriguez is doomed, doomed, doomed. The ESPN writer has an overwrought piece about the fact that A-Rod hasn't hit a home run since April 23. 

"...now that the Yankees have "fixed" Derek Jeter -- or more likely, Jeter has fixed himself -- it is time for someone to do the same with Alex Rodriguez.....

At the rate he was hitting homers and driving in runs, a 50-homer, 150-RBI season was not out of the question.

Now, it certainly seems well beyond his reach. In fact, sometimes when he is at the plate it looks as though he will never hit No. 6.

He continues:

Plenty has been said so far this year, but by Alex Rodriguez, very little has been done.

Derek Jeter's struggles caused us all to forget about that for a couple of weeks. But on one big day in Texas, Derek got better.

Now it's Alex Rodriguez' turn to get better, and fast.

Geez, Louise, you would think he was slumping for six months!

I hope Jeter is back, although I would put an asterisk on the second homer, against Arthur Rhodes (as Bill Madden writes, the pitcher has given up 17 homers in 85 innings against the Yanks, and has a 7.52 ERA against the team). If Manny Ramirez was the greatest Yankee-killer of all time, Arthur Rhodes might be the greatest Yankee patsy of all time.

But really, the biggest beneficiary of the focus on Jeter over the last few weeks wasn't A-Rod, but Jorge Posada. A designated hitter who is batting just .152 is pretty terrible. While Posada does have 6 homers (but he hasn't hit one since April 23, the same date as Rodriguez,) any other player batting so poorly for the year wouldn't be the DH. And given that Posada will turn 40 this August, it's not unreasonable to start wondering what it all means.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Derek Jeter Makes Buck Showalter's Hate List, and Nielsen's Most Marketable List

Two notes: I wrote today for The Faster Times about how Buck Showalter called out Derek Jeter and Theo Epstein. I think what Buck did is fine -- in fact, I compared him to Rex Ryan in taking on the big names! If the Orioles are going to compete in the AL East, he needs to keep on channeling his inner Rex Ryan. IMHO, you have to admit that Jeter is a little bit of an actor at flinching at pinches, that the umps favor him in calls, and that Theo Epstein does benefit from a healthy payroll.

In other news, The Nielsen Company sent me information on MLB's Ten Most Marketable Players. To nobody's surprise, Jeter is No. 1. But what did surprise me was that Mariano Rivera is No. 2, and Alex Rodriguez is No. 9! They are rated on an N Score, which measures "name and image awareness, appeal and personality attributes such as sincerity, approachability, experience and influence, both at the national and local levels." Here's the entire list:

1 Derek Jeter New York Yankees
2 Mariano Rivera New York Yankees
3 Josh Hamilton Texas Rangers
4 Albert Pujols St. Louis Cardinals
5 Evan Longoria Tampa Bay Rays
6 Ichiro Suzuki Seattle Mariners
7 Chipper Jones Atlanta Braves
8 Joe Mauer Minnesota Twins
9 Alex Rodriguez New York Yankees
10 Roy Halladay Philadelphia Phillies

It's funny, though, that Mo, other than his restaurant and that Taco Bell commercial with Joe Girardi, hasn't exactly done much with his marketing rank! And while I haven't seen A-Rod in a commerical in a while, he's still No. 9 on this list. (And no Mets made it on!) Nielsen said the Yanks had as many representatives on the list as the entire National League!

One other tidbit from The Nielsen Company:

For all of baseball, including current and former players, commentators and owners, a few all-time greats lead the pack. Yogi Berra holds the top spot, with an N-Score of 257, followed by Willie Mays (236) and Cal Ripken, Jr. (228). One noteworthy surprise? Joe Torre beat out his former players—Jeter and Rodriguez—with a score of 207, making him baseball’s fourth most marketable personality.

Well, that's just great news on Torre. If it means more commercials, my remote control will be getting more of a workout!
What do you think? Tell us about it!

A-Rod and Cameron Diaz (and Popcorn) at the Super Bowl: Most Unromantic Gesture Ever?

One of the things I find oddly endearing about Alex Rodriguez is his terminal awkwardness. Even when he's doing something that should be totally cool, he still manages to look goofy. It kind of humanizes him, in a weird way. And no matter what he does, somebody will always, always, bring up Derek Jeter and say that Jeter would never do whatever A-Rod did.

Like when A-Rod was sitting in a luxury box at the Super Bowl last night with Cameron Diaz feeding him popcorn. That should have been a real coup for Alex, but it ended up causing snickers and snarky remarks. For one thing, she fed him the popcorn the way I had to feed my late cat C.C. a pill when she was sick. And A-Rod looked about as pleased as C.C. did, which is to say, not at all.

And what was up with Alex's very awkward hand placement? Not a good look, dude.

Anyhow, I wrote about it on Facebook last night, and it didn't take long before somebody to note that Derek Jeter would never put himself in a position like that. You mean having a movie star cater to his every whim? I dunno about that. But the awkwardness, I grant you, would not be there. But at the same time, people are not fascinated by Jeter the same way they are Alex. The captain doesn't sell the newspapers that A-Rod does.

However, the other kind of tabloids -- the supermarket gossip ones -- aren't interested in either Jeter or A-Rod. In the Rodriguez-Diaz partnership, she is the one the scandal sheets focus on, not Alex. I was thumbing through Life & Style a few weeks back, and they ran that pic of the two of them vacationing in Mexico, with Cameron paddleboarding, while A-Rod was relaxing. And they cut the top half of him out of the photo. Harsh!

Anyhow, here's the video from the Super Bowl. It also cracks me up that Joe Buck mentions John Madden before noting that George and Laura Bush were at the game.

As a free agent, will Derek Jeter pull an A-Rod or a Torre?

Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees are at an impasse right now in contract negotiations, with anywhere between $45 million and $105 million separating them.  So what happens next? I think one of two things happens -- he could either follow the path of Alex Rodriguez or Joe Torre. Let me explain.

Our Met fan friend Coop of My Summer Family fame is the first person I heard suggest that Jeter could pull an A-Rod, throwing agent Casey Close under the bus, blaming him for asking for too much money,  and then going directly to the Yankees to negotiate. Granted I never bought that Boras somehow acted against A-Rod's wishes -- as dopey as opting out during the World Series was, I am quite sure it was A-Rod's idea. But at any rate, after seeing what a huge blunder he made, A-Rod rang up Warren Buffett for advice. Alex then ate some humble pie, threw Scott Boras under the bus, and managed to get an even bigger contract than he had before. Not that I think Boras cared about that -- no matter how much he got blamed, he still got his 10%, and made Alex richer than ever.

The reason that scenario worked for A-Rod though, is that was plausible to believe that he was Boras' puppet, doing dopey things because the Avenging Agent told him to. Also, A-Rod was willing to humiliate himself in crawling back to the Yanks, begging for another chance. A less insecure, more prideful individual would have moved on, I think.

Could Jeter do the same thing A-Rod did to extricate himself from this mess? I dunno. The media has been on Jeter's case -- for really the first time ever -- about his outrageous contract demands, but I could see them going along with blaming Close, and not Jeter, for how much things have gone awry. It wouldn't be the first time they sent something negative about Jeter down the ol' memory hole.

The real issue would be the "crawling back to the Yankees and admitting he he was wrong" thingy. I'm not really sure Jeter could do it. I am quite positive he fully believes that he's worth $25 million a year for as long as he wants to play. Why wouldn't he? For 15 years, he's had everybody telling him how great he is. Combine that with a personality that cuts people off at the first sign of "negativity," as the euphemism goes, meaning that he doesn't have a lot of people around him questioning him and telling him that he messed up. I just am not sure how he would admit fallibility here.

Remember what happened with Andy Pettitte a few years ago? He turned down an $11 million option the Yanks had, and figured he could get more money. As it turns out, he misjudged the market, and ended up crawling back to the Yanks for $5.5 million plus incentives. But Andy was able to acknowledge that he messed up, and say that while he wished he were making more money, he was glad to still be a Yankee.

But Jeter is just not an Andy Pettitte personality type. The person he's most like is Joe Torre -- somebody who is used to being treated with deference, somebody quick to hold a grudge, and somebody quick to be insulted. So the longer this goes on, the more I can see Jeter complaining about the "insult" of only being offered $15M a year for three years, and him taking his talents to Baltimore or some other team.

Granted, I don't think any team will offer him anything close to what Jeter would make as a Yankee. But the Los Angeles Dodgers never came close to matching Torre's old $8 million salary with the Yanks -- or even that $5 million plus $3 million in incentives offer that the Yanks made him for 2008. You remember, the one he deemed "an insult"? Yet it didn't stop Joe from walking out the door. And a year after leaving, Torre was still so sure he was right, he trashed the organization in "The Yankee Years," complicating his legacy, and further ticking off the Yanks' front office.

Could Jeter do the same thing -- make that the same things, because he and his friends and family are fully cooperating with Ian O'Connor's upcoming biography? Absolutely. Remember, others, most recently Jon Heyman. have written that Jeter is already aggrieved that he's not the top dog he used to be among his teammates..O'Connor's new book promises to reveal info about the captain's declining influence in the clubhouse. Is it possible Jeter might trash the organization? I wouldn't be surprised.

Granted, it would make zero sense for Derek Jeter to burn bridges with the organization that made him a New York legend, and that is offering him more money than anybody else would. But it didn't make much sense for Joe Torre to do what he did, either.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

The Other Guy: Imagine if A-Rod had "acted" the way Derek Jeter did last night?

Maybe I was wrong about Derek Jeter being a bad actor. After all, his master thespian performance at Wednesday's game, where he pretended to be badly hit by the ball, not only got him first base, but it got Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon thrown out of the game for protesting.

I was out at dinner in Manhattan last night, so I missed seeing the play live. When I was heading home, I talked to Squawker Jon, who saw the play on TV and said that either Jeter was really hurt -- or really faking it! Jon thought Jeter was doing the latter.

Since then, I watched the clip (go here if you haven't seen it.) Let me tell you something --  it just goes to show what I have been saying  for years whenever Alex Rodriguez was caught in an on-field controversy, whether it be the slap play, the Ha play, or the "get off my mound" debacle. And that is that if Derek Jeter had done any of the so-called "bush league" things A-Rod had gotten lambasted for, writers and fans would be praising his gamesmanship, quick thinking, and his willingness to do whatever it takes to win.

Just take a look at what happened in the Yankees-Rays game. Jeter, who has been slumping for the last three months, took the opportunity to get on base, even though he didn't deserve to be there in that situation. When Chad Qualls' pitch hit Jeter's bat, and made a cracking noise, the captain writhed around like he got hit by it, and then literally doubled over in pain. Because of the whole dog-and-pony show Jeter put on, home plate umpire Lance Barksdale awarded Jeter first, which proved crucial when Curtis Granderson hit a two-run homer to briefly put the Yankees ahead. Ultimately, thanks to Phil Hughes serving up another homer to Dan Johnson, Tampa Bay won the game.

Jeter readily admitted in the postgame that the ball hit the bat, and not him:

Jeter, smiling slyly during his postgame exchange with the media, made no apologies for capitalizing on the opportunity.

"Well, (Barksdale) told me to go to first," he said. "I'm not going to tell him I'm not going to first. I mean, my job is to try to get on base."

Asked if he was responding to the vibration from the ball hitting the end of his bat or acting when he shook his arm, Jeter said, "Vibration. And acting. Both."

Let's review. Jeter, the manmany fans consider to have the most integrity of any player in baseball, pretended to be hit by the pitch, and he wasn't. His getting awarded first base could have been the deciding factor in the game. Then he smiled in the postgame as he not only admitted faking the whole thing, but essentially blamed the ump for falling for his act. And to top it all off, media admiringly praised his act. One example -- Marc Carig of the Star-Ledger wrote that Jeter "pulled off a performance worthy of adding another item to his trophy case: an Oscar," and said the struggling shortstop "applied a Shakespearian interpretation."


If you changed Derek Jeter's name to Alex Rodriguez in this scenario, do you think there would be one bit of positive press thrown A-Rod's way? Do you think anybody would be praising Alex's gamesmanship, great acting, quick thinking, and willingness to win? Of course not.

Look, it's not that I'm against what Jeter did last night. Good for him. He's been struggling, and the Yankees have been slumping. He wanted to get on base by any means necessary. You know, kind of like the way a struggling A-Rod tried to get on first to get something going for his team in Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS.

But it just goes to show  that Jeter, the person treated as a living saint by many Yankee fans, can be just as guilty of committing a so-called "bush league" play as A-Rod. Of course, when the captain does it, it's great baseball, but when A-Rod does it, it's a crime against humanity. As Billy Wagner would say, shocker!

What do you think? Tell us about it!