Should Derek Jeter Attend the All-Star Game?

So, there's a whole media and fan kerfuffle over the fact that Derek Jeter is not going to the All-Star Game. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports sez that it's because what has been described as "emotional and physical exhaustion."  And San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson complained about all the missing in action players at this year's All-Star Game, saying:

"I would say that you would show up, unless you need these three days to recover,” Wilson said. “You are representing your team, so it would be good to be here.” He also said that "it’s one of your duties as a player, out of respect, knowing that there was a guy that really wanted to be on the All-Star team, and his stats were right there, and he would have loved the chance to be here.” Wilson said that "whether you’re taking it for granted or just think it’s a grind, I always think about the pitcher who is better than me at this moment.”

Anyhow, I understand why a lot of fans are upset that Jeter isn't at least just showing up, the way the injured Jose Reyes is, especially since 1) Jeter is getting a reported $500K bonus for  being elected, and 2) Jeter got a lot of votes this year because of the 3,000 hit chase. But personally, it doesn't bother me, because I never thought his numbers deserved the All-Star nod in the first place this year. So why would I be upset that he didn't show up at an event that I thought he shouldn't have been elected to in the first place? Backhanded defense, I know, and I totally understand why others feel differently, but it doesn't really matter to me, and I can't be a hypocrite about it and say it does.

So, I want to hear what readers think -- I've already heard a lot on the subject on my Facebook page. What do you think? Should he have gone to the game or not? Tell us about it!

Did Brian Cashman Insult Derek Jeter or Compliment Him?

Quick note while watching tonight's game. Brian Cashman spoke today about Derek Jeter's importance to the Yankees. When I first heard fans griping about what Cash said, I didn't get at first why they were mad. After all, his comments looked very complimentary -- he said Jeter was "a championship-caliber contributor and an above-average shortstop."

Then Squawker Jon pointed out something else in the interview. Here is the money quote from what the GM said on ESPN 1050 radio today:

"I think he's an above-average shortstop in major league baseball," Cashman said. "He's not the same player he used to be, and how many people are when they start to get older? But I think he's a championship-caliber contributor and an above-average shortstop, and that's more than enough. We have other guys on offense that are charged with leading the way. Derek has always been a table setter, but Derek's offense isn't gonna make or break us. That's gonna come from other guys in the lineup that are expected to do more."

Squawker Jon sent me an email with the last part of that paragraph, asking, "Isn't this pretty much what A-Rod said about Jeter in the infamous article a decade ago?"

Let's take a look. Here's A-Rod's quote, from the infamous 2001 Esquire interview:

"Jeter's been blessed with great talent around him," Alex says. "He's never had to lead. He can just go and play and have fun. And he hits second—that's totally different than third and fourth in a lineup. You go into New York, you wanna stop Bernie and O'Neill. You never say, Don't let Derek beat you. He's never your concern."  

I don't think what Cashman said is that big a deal, but I do agree with Jon that the similarity in the quotes was amusing. However, I don't think the Captain will be quite as amused!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

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 Biographer Ian O'Connor Defends His Subject -- Again

ESPN New York's Ian O'Connor has written yet another column lauding the merits of Derek Jeter, without bothering to mention that he has written an upcoming book on the Yankee captain with the cooperation of Jeter and his friends and family. That makes at least a half-dozen times since the fall that O'Connor has written such a pro-Jeter column without even a cursory disclaimer about the book.

And that's problematic, especially given that the book is billed as being written with inside access to the captain. O'Connor's publisher's blurb says that in the upcoming book "The Captain: The Journey of Derek Jeter" O’Connor" draws on extensive reporting and unique access to Jeter that has spanned some fifteen years." BN.com's promotion for the book says O'Connor "draws on unique access to Jeter and more than 200 new interviews."

I first wrote about this conflict of interest back in October, and then again in November (twice) and in December. And here we are in March, and O'Connor is still writing fawning articles about Jeter, without the simplest of disclaimers. Given that he has a financial stake in the subject, he should tell his readers about the book, and how he got inside access from Jeter for it.

O'Connor doesn't just write slobbering columns on the captain, but he has positioned those columns as being the inside view of Jeter. In one of them, he said Jeter wanted to play until 2017 (!) and that Jeter's trainer, Jason Riley claimed that "the desire to be the greatest can never be turned down by Father Time."

In another one last fall, O'Connor pushed for the Yankees to give Jeter a four-year, $23 million deal, saying those dollar figures would be "fair," and writing:

"There's no need to diminish him by demanding that he take a pay cut. If one athlete of this generation deserves to be overpaid, it's Jeter. A token, thanks-for-the-memories bump to $23 million would suffice.

There are a lot of pro-Jeter writers in this town, but nobody else in New York suggested such a ridiculous new contract for the captain.

O'Connor's most recent Jeter article says that he "desperately wants a dignified endgame to his career, and he knows that being a New York Yankees icon never guarantees you one." O'Connor also writes that "Jeter wasn't hurt so much by the tens of millions of dollars that the Yankees wouldn't give him. He was hurt by the public nature of the quarrel with his employer, and by the fact he was sucked into a swirling A-Rodian drama he couldn't control."  Well, is O'Connor speculating on the emotions here, or did Jeter tell him that's the way he felt? And if it's the latter, why did he share that with O'Connor? Is it because of the book?

Not to mention that O'Connor completely neglected to note that Jeter's agent Casey Close helped make this situation public, when he whined about being "baffled" by the Yankees stance, and compared his client to Babe Ruth. For some strange reason, that didn't make it into this article.

O'Connor also writes in the most recent piece that:

If he needs to be taken out of the leadoff spot and, ultimately, deposited near the bottom of the order, that will be a huge, franchise-rattling story. If he needs to be moved from shortstop to who knows where, the coverage of that demotion will be defined by an apocalyptic tone.

For now, Jeter is still Jeter, a future Hall of Famer who just needed some extra face time with the hitting coach, Kevin Long. With the contract done and the footwork adjusted, the smart money says the captain will make something of a comeback this year.

If Jeter needs to be moved down in the lineup, or switch positions, he will only have to do what every single superstar eventually faces. Is O'Connor suggesting that Jeter be held to a different standard?

I personally think Jeter will have a very good 2011 -- the anger over the contract talks this winter will motivate him, I think -- but this article is so filled with spin, it's like a washing machine or something. And you have to wonder if some of that spin is due to O'Connor's new book on Jeter.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Report: Derek Jeter throws Kevin Long under the bus

I really wasn't going to write again today on the whole Derek Jeter situation, but Sports Illustrated's Jon Heyman had some interesting tidbits in his article about the impasse. He thinks the Yanks were very irked by Casey Close's Babe Ruth comparison to his client. But the most fascinating source in the piece was who or what Jeter has effectively blamed for his season -- not his age, but hitting coach Kevin Long!

Heyman writes:

The Yankees have made clear they believe $45 million is an overpay for a 36-year-old infielder. Jeter, though, has told friends he doesn't believe it's an age issue and that he finally corrected a flaw in his swing with a month to go in the season, a flaw his friends believe might have been corrected sooner had his old friend Don Mattingly still been the hitting coach. 

Oh, please.  If he really corrected that "flaw in his swing" in September, then why did he, known for his great postseasons, hit only .250 in the playoffs -- even worse than his 2010 regular season numbers?

The person this story makes look bad is not Kevin Long, who is passive-aggressively blamed, but Jeter himself. Especially since, according to Keith Olbermann's inside sources with the team, the Yankees were trying for months to get him to change his approach.

Olbermann wrote:

The question various Yankee non-players had been asking Jeter since the spring, as the ground balls multiplied and the extra-base hits vanished, was a simple one: Do you realize you are about to be 36 years old? Do you understand that what's happening to you isn't some failure of strength? Are you getting the hint that you have to change your approach at the plate? It was asked in any of a dozen different forms by possibly as many would-be helpers, and only when the well ran dry as the dog days approached did Jeter finally accept the possibility.

Anyhow, I don't think this "if only I had Donnie Baseball as my hitting coach" excuse is going to fly, not when the Yanks just gave Long a contract extension, and not when players like Curtis Granderson, who worked with Long this August on completely breaking down his swing, ended up hitting 14 homers in the last six weeks of the year, and .357 (best on the team) in the postseason.

Heyman's article had these other tidbits, including why one friend thinks the captain could leave the Yankees:

A friend of Jeter's posed this question: Why not? Why can't Jeter leave? The friend pointed out that most of Jeter's dearest friends and allies are gone from the Yankees. Torre is gone. Mattingly is gone. George Steinbrenner is gone. Bernie Williams is gone. Tino Martinez is gone. The Core Four may still be there, but best friend Jorge Posada has been told he's lost his catching job and the other three remain free agents at the moment (all three, including Jeter, were declined arbitration by the Yankees.)

Don't really understand why Jeter's friends told Heyman that; it's counterproductive for him. When part of Casey Close's sale job is pushing he captain as such an iconic figure and important leader, it's a little strange to hear that he doesn't have many friends and allies in the clubhouse anymore. Besides, is being a Yankee about the history, and the lure of the pinstripes, or hanging out with your buddies? It's a baseball team, not junior high.

I wonder if that's what the upcoming Ian O'Connor book's description of Jeter's "declining influence in the clubhouse" is all about. And if I were the Yankees, I would worry that the book is gonna be settling some scores. Is that going to be his form of payback -- being involved in "The Yankee Years II"? Writing such a book permanently tainted Joe Torre's image of classiness. Is Jeter going to go down the same road? I would think he'd be smarter than that, but I don't know what to think anymore.

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!