The Captain Hanging Up his Pinstripes

Derek Jeter is one of the best players to ever play the game. He is a New York Yankees legend up there with Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Reggie Jackson, Lou Gehrig and others. Jeter will always be remembered for his postseason heroics plus being one of the most consistent players for his career. Yesterday on Facebook of all places, Jeter announced 2014 will be his last season and will be retiring. This not only ends an era with New York Yankees, but it also closes the book on the Major League Baseball players of the late 90's to the 2000's.

Yankees are one of the most hated teams in all of sports. People find a reason to dislike because they spend too much money even when there are other teams in Major League Baseball spending more money but I digress. No matter how people feel about New York, they always say 'I respect Jeter. I might hate the Yankees but dammit, Jeter gets my respect.' The reason why is for a lot of people he fits the classic narrative of playing the game the right way. Many people believe Jeter was never a steroid or PED user making him one of the cleanest athletes in baseball, which purists love more than their own children or siblings.

Jeter's career started when the Steroid Era was moving at full steam with MLB having their heads directly in the sand. Jeter never looked like a guy whom took steroids nor will anyone accuses him as such, and for that reason, he became so damn appealing to people around the country. The appeal of Jeter grew rapidly when The Mitchell Report came out, and other players were accused or caught taking PED's.  There were columns and statements with people saying 'Why can't more players be like Jeter?' If anything, the Steroid Era helped build Jeter's legacy by being one of the clean ones gaining him more respect because of it.

Another big thing Jeter will be remembered for recreating the shortstop position. Granted, Alex Rodriguez deserves a large amount of credit for this as well, but Jeter and Rodriguez were the cornerstones of making the shortstop position into an offense one. For years upon years, people saw the shortstop position as one for defense and one where the shortstop would either bat in the leadoff spot or the eighth/ninth position. Many people forgot this vital part of Jeter's legacy, but he helped pave the way for teams to rethink how they scouted shortstop players for the future.  Jeter showed a shortstops could be offensive and defensive talent.

Reading through Jeter's stat line is like drinking a fine bourbon. In 17 out of his 19 years, Jeter had more than 150 hits, eight of them he had over 200 and led the league twice.  There were only six years where Jeter did not score at least 100 runs and led the league once. Only three times did Jeter not have an average over .290 and only twice did Jeter not have an OPS over .700. The man is a model of consistency and this is not even talking about his postseason numbers. Jeter had 20 home runs with hitting .308 in the months of October and November. Even though he never won the MVP, an argument could be made he was the most valuable offensive player in 1999 and 2006 when he led the league in Wins Above Replacement.

Let's hope for the final season of Jeter he is able to play instead of what happened in 2013. It is never fun to see great ones go out limping, rather we would like to see the legends of the game have one more big-time effort in the tank. Here's to you Captain.

Charlie.

Keeping Up With the Red Sox

New York Yankees watched their arch rival Boston Red Sox win their third World Series title in 10 years while the established Yankees had only one in that time span. This is a reverse of what happened for the last 100 years. Without a doubt, New York believes they need to make multiple moves this offseason to compete again at the top of the American League and Major League Baseball. While they have brought in older guys, it is fair to say the Evil Empire is starting to look like itself again even with their older talent and especially with their mega splash adding Masahiro Tanaka

For those unfamiliar, Tanaka is a 25 year old Japanese phenom pitcher. We have seen the likes of Yu Darvish, Hisashi Iwakuwa come into the American League, and dominate for the greater the part right upon arrival. The scary thing is Tanaka has been better than the last two Japanese pitchers before heading to Major League Baseball. This also means he was worth more than these two players with New York ponying up 155 million dollars over seven years for someone who has never pitched in Major League Baseball. Is this a significant risk? Yes, it is but it could pay off for New York in a big way.

In the last three years in Japan, Tanaka's ERA has not been over 1.90 with barely walking anyone, and he only gave up six home runs in 2013. While his SO/9 ratio went down in the last couple of years, his BB/9 also went down meaning Tanaka is pitching a little more to contact and not trying to strike out everyone. Which would be evident as in 2011, he has 241 strikeouts, a career-high for Tanaka although he does not have those numbers across the board. While some feel the money given to Tanaka will be only worth it if the Yankees make the playoffs this season, it is true at a smaller scale, more so the expectation is he will be great right away versus suffering through the usual rookie up's and down's.

New York now established front-line pitching staff, and if they can avoid injuries, American League East has another team competing for the crown making it on paper look like the hardest division in baseball. All five of those teams are definitely 80 win teams without question with four them probably worthy of 85. Yet New York really needs to at least make it look like to their fan base, they are the ones with the grandest things similar to a family who needs an Escalade,  80" HD TV, biggest house and all of the finer things even if maybe they are not the most stable group of people. There is no telling all of the pieces New York brought in, Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran and now Tanaka, are all going to come together and mesh like they are supposed to plus with precedent showing it does not always work out. The weird thing is even if New York struggles next year, they can at least look at their fans and say 'we tried.'

The last statement is very important especially if Boston or Tampa Bay makes another run this season because at least, it looks like on the surface, New York made an attempt to build a better team instead of sitting on their hands not doing anything.  The surface level comfort of knowing this will keep the front office and some of the fans pleased at least for the time being.

Charlie.