Derek Jeter re-signs with Yankees: Who won?

It figures. After writing on pretty much every aspect of the Derek Jeter contract saga, I was busy all day yesterday with my brother visiting from Portland, Oregon, so I didn't get to write about the contract deal finally being done. (One of the things we did yesterday was take the Yankee Stadium tour -- more on that in a future post.)

Anyhow, I think that the Yankees won the negotiations. Yes, they gave Jeter a player option for a fourth season, but they're not paying much more per year, and Jeter didn't even come close to getting the A-Rod type contract he wanted.

I wrote a piece for The Faster Times about my thoughts. Jeter did some real damage to his reputation, although that his cronies in the media will put this down the old memory hole and act like the Yankees, not him, were at fault. Mike Lupica already did as much today.

And Jeter biographer Ian O'Connor suggests that this all showed how "smart" Jeter is. O'Connor even had the nerve to write this: "The Yankees could have offered Jeter minimum wage, free parking and cab fare to and from the ballpark, and he would have found a way to accept it." Oh, please. Looks like O'Connor needs some of that reality potion. It took a month of negotiations for Jeter to accept making less than his $22.6 million 2010 salary. The idea that he would play for minimum wage is just ridiculous. But hey, O'Connor's got that Jeter biography book coming out -- you know, the one that he never discloses in his columns -- and he's got to keep on polishing that ol' Jeter image. Oy vey.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Hypocrisy Alert: Mike Lupica (!) calls Yankee brass "thin-skinned"

Mike Lupica's got a lot of nerve. The New York Daily News columnist who first wrote the news about Casey Close being "baffled" about the way the Yankees were negotiating with his client Derek Jeter, is still carrying Team Jeter's water. Today, he called the Yankees "thin-skinned" for daring to respond to Close's comments:

Over the past few days the Yankees seem to have lost their minds because Jeter's agent, Casey Close, told me Saturday night that he finds the Yankees' negotiating strategy "baffling."

Not stupid. Not cheap. Not arrogant. Not insulting. Baffling. But in the thin-skinned world of the Yankees, they acted as if Close were Larry Lucchino of the Red Sox calling them the "Evil Empire" all over again.

I find it hilarious that Lupica would call the Yankees "thin-skinned." That's so rich, coming from a sportswriter who will not allow readers to leave comments on his stories, who will not list an email for readers to respond to (and who used to run a fake email in his columns to direct readers to nowhere), and who reportedly had sports columnist Jason Whitlock banned from ESPN's "Sports Reporters" show for daring to disagree with him.  Guess it takes one to know one.

And let's remember what Jeter's agent actually said, as much as Lupey wants to whitewash it; in today's column, Lupica left out the whole Babe Ruth comparison Close made to him earlier in the week. Here's what Close said:

“There’s a reason the Yankees themselves have stated Derek Jeter is their modern-day Babe Ruth. Derek’s significance to the team is much more than just stats. And yet, the Yankees’ negotiating strategy remains baffling.”

Then Close said: “They continue to argue their points in the press and refuse to acknowledge Derek’s total contribution to their franchise.”

Yet Lupica's surprised the Yankees would take exception to that? Spare me.

Lupey continues:

The Yankees act as if Close is the one who ramped up the rhetoric, and not the other way around. You know when the rhetoric really started on this thing? When Hal Steinbrenner said a few weeks ago that the Jeter negotiation "could get messy" before it ever really began.

Here's what I think happened. My guess is that the Yankees had a fairly good idea, even before their official meeting with Jeter and his agent, about how much he thought he was worth. So they knew things "could get messy," which is why they did that pre-emptive strike in the press. Why else would they bring up the issue in the first place?

We still don't know exactly what figure Jeter wants -- if Lupica is privy to that figure, he isn't sharing -- but he does suggest what he thinks is a reasonable contract:

How about you take the average that Jeter just made over the last 10 years - it would work out to $18.9 million a year - and make that the three-year offer. And if Jeter is still hitting .300 at the end of that, a fourth year, for the same money, automatically kicks in.


That way Jeter isn't asked to take a salary cut after everything he has meant to the Yankees and continues to mean. You know what the difference is between $57 million for three years and what the Yankees are offering Jeter? It's just a little more than the Yankees paid Javy Vazquez last season.

A few points:

* For somebody who whines about the Yankees payroll advantage as much as Lupica does, he's awfully quick to demand that they overpay here, isn't he? And he acts like an additional $12 to $30 million is chickenfeed.
* As much as I was against the Javy trade from Day 1, it wasn't the Yankees who agreed to pay him $11 million; it was the Atlanta Braves who gave him that contract.

* This "pay cut" nonsense is awfully reminiscent of Joe Torre's whining over the Yankees' last contract offer to him.

* And, if I remember correctly, you can award players for reaching certain milestones, and have options kick in when they reach innings goals. But it's my understanding that you can't have options go into effect over things like hitting a certain number, or winning X number of games.

As for Brian Cashman saying that Jeter should test the free agency market, if he thinks he can get a better deal, Lupica has this to say:

Test the market, Cashman says.

Come on. Brian Cashman knows better than anyone that the market is always different here. Especially here. Always here.

It's just the opposite in this particular case. Any other team would have to give Jeter more money, not less, if they wanted him to leave the Yankees. Yet nobody is so far. Shouldn't that tell us something?

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Is Ian O'Connor Derek Jeter's media mouthpiece?

According to ESPN New York columnist Ian O'Connor's most recent piece, not only will Derek Jeter play until 2017 (!), but he'll be doing it at the highest of levels, too, with most of those years at shortstop. At least, that's what Jason Riley, Jeter's paid personal trainer, says to the columnist.

O'Connor, the writer whose upcoming book about Jeter has the full cooperation of the captain and the people around him, devotes a full column to letting Riley have his say, with very little in the way of tough questioning or skepticism.

Oh, and by the way, O'Connor is still not disclosing that Jeter book in his ESPN writings, a potential conflict of interest that raises a whole lot of questions. Like, is Riley a source for his book? Did Jeter direct his trainer to speak for him, and let it be known that he wants to play until he's 43? And does the 2017 number have anything to do with Alex Rodriguez being signed through that season?

We don't get answers to any of those questions -- heck, we don't even get any appropriate amount of skepticism about Jeter's undeserved 2010 Gold Glove -- in O'Connor's article. But we do get tidbits like these:

Speaking from inside a Jeter camp that rarely opens a public window on its soul, especially during contract negotiations, Riley mentioned George Blanda, George Foreman, Dara Torres and Brett Favre as athletes who thrived after turning 40. The trainer believes Jeter will join those golden oldies in Mariano Rivera's bullpen.


"The desire to be the greatest," Riley said, "can never be turned down by Father Time."...

"I don't think anything can hold Derek back other than himself. If he decides to hang it up before [he turns 43], then that will be his decision. If Derek decides at 41 he's already given his best years, then that's where it will end. But if he decides to go until he's 43, he'll do everything in his power to play the game at a high level and help the team through that time. I think there's so much determination inside of Derek that he can do it."

What nonsense. Brett Favre may still think he's like a kid out there, but age has caught up to him. As it does to everybody eventually. If all it took was determination to succeed, then why would any elite athlete ever need to retire? You don't think Michael Jordan -- one of the greatest competitors of all time -- wouldn't still be out there on the basketball court at age 47 if all it took was inner drive?

When Jeter's trainer is asked about the shortstop's disappointing 2010 season, Riley responds:

"I won't speak on whether it was worse, the same or better," Riley said, "but I've definitely had conversations with Derek about what our thoughts are on this past season. We're looking into it and we're really going to evaluate it. I've got a lot of people, my staff around me, who are evaluating this.

Better? Come on now. Was Riley one of the Gold Glove voters or something?

Riley continues:

"It's a long season, and your body gets beaten up, and we have to find a way to keep Derek fresh over 162 games. It's a work in progress."

As for finding "a way to keep Derek fresh over 162 games," how about the captain agreeing to a day off once in a while? Mind-blowing, I know!

More from the trainer:

"You can't put an age on the heart of an athlete, and Derek's got one of the purest hearts in sports," Riley said. "He's not going to allow himself to have another down year, if he even considers 2010 a down year. His internal drive separates him from others. I've worked with very few people who go after the game like he does."

If Jeter doesn't consider 2010 a down year, he is delusional, not determined. Many players going for a new contract have a great year, like A-Rod and Jorge Posada's terrific 2007 seasons. Jeter has the worst season of his career in a walk year, but I guess there's nothing to worry about because of his pure heart and internal drive or something? C'mon now.

In an odd way, this piece kind of fits in with a Keith Olbermann blog entry this week about Jeter, about how he was apparently in such denial over his slump this year that he wouldn't begin to start to change his approach at the plate until September:

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.

At any rate, between this piece, and the Casey Close whinefest in today's Mike Lupica column, which seems to consist of "Waaaaah, waaaaah, the Yankees said Jeter was the modern-day Babe Ruth, but they won't give him a gazillion dollars," Jeter's strategy this year is terrible. Doesn't he realize that the longer this goes on, the worse he -- and not the Yankees -- look?

As Ken Davidoff writes today in Newsday:

If these last few weeks of the "Jeter vs. the Yankees" saga have taught us anything, it's that the Yankees' captain is human.

Which, you know, runs contrary to much of the mythologizing we've absorbed in the last 15 or so years....

If Jeter were to live up to his own myth, he'd shrug, say "I've been far more lucky than unlucky in my professional life" and sign what the Yankees offer him, which stands as much more than any other club appears prepared to give him.

But the pride and competitiveness that help make him such a great player? They don't take the winter off. After all, if Jeter really cared about absolutely nothing besides winning, he wouldn't have contributed to the tension with A-Rod that didn't dissipate until A-Rod's 2009 comeuppance.

And he wouldn't bristle about any questions concerning his future spot in the lineup or position. He may give you the "nothing matters besides winning" line, but good luck getting the "whatever is best for the team" line.

Jeter's not doing anything that any other star in his position wouldn't do. The difference is, we've been told for so many years that he is above such things.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

Non-Shocker! Mike Lupica tells A-Rod to "show up," makes him Designated Yankee Scapegoat

After Alex Rodriguez's great October last year, most of the media have been mostly muted on his so-far-disappointing ALCS this year. That's a story in itself, as evidenced by what Mike Vaccaro and even notorious A-Rod basher Wally Matthews wrote on the subject today. Vaccaro said that "it isn't a matter of "if A-Rod will hit in the postseason, "it is a matter of when." But the Daily News' Mike Lupica is still writing like it's 2006, with his back-page column criticizing the third baseman.

I've never written a blog entry criticizing Lupica before, mostly because I try to avoid reading his mailed-in, cliche-ridden columns as much as possible. It's like Lupey constructed each piece in MadLibs or something -- blah blah blah, Yankee payroll, blah blah blah, the Wilpons are great, blah blah blah, let's make a lame joke at A-Rod's expense, blah blah blah, I have the greatest family in the world. Bor-ing. Shooting from the Lip? More like Snoozing from the Lip!

But I had to say something about Lupica's big screed on A-Rod, where he says that it's time for Rodriguez to show up in the postseason. Because even for Lupey, this column is ridiculously unfair. Some snippets:

The Yankees showed up on Wednesday in Game 5, they did, hundred percent. Now they have to do it again in Texas, or they become another big, bad Yankee team of this decade that got hit somewhere before the World Series and never recovered.

You know who is supposed to show up Friday night for Game 6? Alex Rodriguez. So far he has three hits in the series and only one of them - two-RBI single that Michael Young should have made a play on, eighth inning of Game 1 - has mattered. There have been times when he seemed perfectly happy to take a walk, leave it to Cano when Cano was still hitting behind him.

A few points:

* Lupica writes that "there have been times when he seemed perfectly happy to take a walk, leave it to Cano when Cano was still hitting behind him." Aside from Lupica not seeming to understand that getting on base by any means necessary is considered a good thing these days, how does he know that A-Rod "seemed perfectly happy to take a walk"? Is The King a mindreader now?

Incidentally, do you know how many times A-Rod has been walked in the eight games of the postseason?  Four -- three in the ALCS, and one in the ALDS. Do you know how many times he was walked with Marcus Thames, not Cano, batting behind him? Two. So we're talking about ONE TIME in the ALCS where A-Rod walked in front of Cano! So much for Lupica's point. At any rate, there were times in this series where I would have preferred that A-Rod take a walk, and not strike out or hit a weak dribbler or hit into a double play!

* Sure, A-Rod has had a bad postseason, but so has every other Yankee hitter not named Robinson Cano or Curtis Granderson. Not to bash Mark Teixeira, but he didn't merit a back page column when he had a .000 BA in the ALCS before getting hurt, the second year in a row he had a terrible postseason. What, is it because Tex is a "True Yankee," and A-Rod isn't? Puh-lease.

* At any rate, Lupica's article is very curiously timed, especially since Rodriguez had a good Game 5, and looked the best at the plate that he's been for the whole ALCS. A-Rod was on base three times Wednesday, twice via walks, and once via a sharply hit double to left field. (He didn't get an RBI -- Nick Swisher surely would have scored on it -- because it was a ground-rule double that bounced into the left-field seats.)

A-Rod scored the first run thanks to the first walk (so much for walks being bad!) He also hit the ball very hard a second time, but Michael Young made a great play to cost him a hit. And he looked good in the field that game, something he has not been during the series. A more fair-minded person would have seen this as a good game for Rodriguez. But that's not Lupica.  According to him, nothing Rodriguez did in this game "has mattered."  Good grief.

* Lupica does briefly mention that other players haven't stepped it up, but doesn't give them the full-throttle criticism he does A-Rod:

He's not the only one in the order who hasn't shown enough stick. Derek Jeter has hits, but has struck out six times Mark Teixeira was 0-for-14 before he got hurt. Nick Swisher is .105. Maybe the home run that Swisher hit in Game 5 is the start of something for him.

Why is it that Swisher getting only his second hit of the entire ALCS is "the start of something for him," but A-Rod having a very good Game 5 doesn't matter?

* Lupica isn't even willing to give Rodriguez credit for his huge hit with the bases loaded in Game 1,saying it was a "two-RBI single that Michael Young should have made a play on." Maybe in Lupica's world, Michael Young should have fielded that hit in Game 1, but most people think that would have been a tough play for Young to have made. I watched the video again, and broadcaster Ron Darling said that the batted ball was going "a hundred miles an hour;" thus, Young was unable to make the play. And Young did not get an error on it. So much for Lupey's great analysis.
* Finally, it takes more than one star to win a series. We saw A-Rod "show up," as Lupica would say, in September and win AL Player of the Month for his great hitting, going .295/.375./600 for the rest of  the season, with nine homers and 28 RBI . What was the Yanks' record during that time? 9-17.

What do you think? Tell us about it!