Derek Jeter Can No Longer Carry the New York Yankees for a Full Season
May 30, 2012 · Zachary D. Rymer · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
Ever see the movie Catch Me If You Can?
If you haven’t, there’s a running gag in that movie in which the characters ask why the Yankees always win, and the first response is because they have Mickey Mantle.
If they were to re-make that movie in a modern setting (i.e. with iPhones, robots, flying cars, etc.), the line would be that the Yankees always win because they have Derek Jeter. He’s the heart of the team, and he’s been the heart of the team for close to two decades at this point.
I’m not about to challenge Jeter’s status as the heart and soul of the Yankees. That would be foolish, and I’d rather not have to deal with Yankees fans throwing bricks through my window.
I will, however, say this: Jeter is no longer capable of carrying the Yankees on his back. They’ve become too heavy, and his back has become too old.
I’m well aware that Jeter is having a good season. He entered Wednesday night’s contest against the Los Angeles Angels with a .338 batting average and five home runs, numbers that look pretty good seeing as how he hit just .297 with six home runs all of last season.
I’m also well aware that Jeter’s hot start this season is not necessarily a fluke, as he finished the 2011 season with a .327 batting average in 257 at-bats after the All-Star break. Jeter has been hot ever since July of 2011, and he’s put all of the age concerns to rest in the process.
Except not. Things aren’t as rosy as they seem.
Jeter has good numbers this season, but that’s thanks mainly to his outstanding month of April. In May, he’s hitting just .295. In his last 18 games, he’s hitting just .256 with one extra-base hit and three RBI.
This slump has happened under the radar, and that’s because all eyes have been on the slumping bat of Alex Rodriguez and the struggles of the Yankees’ pitching staff. Compared to the other slumps plaguing the Yankees, Jeter’s looks rather petty by comparison.
Because it’s gotten lost in the shuffle, few have bothered to realize the harsh reality of Jeter’s slump:
He looks old. As old as he did before the 2011 All-Star break and, well, pretty much the entire 2010 season.
Come to think of it, Jeter’s 2012 season is starting to resemble his 2010 season pretty closely. That year, he hit .330 with four home runs in April. He basically picked up where he left off in 2009, a year in which he hit .334 and was consistently good for the entire season. But from the start of May straight through to the end of the season in 2010, Jeter hit a mere .260.
What we’ve learned about Jeter since the start of the 2010 season is this: He can still hit, just not consistently for a full season. The numbers don’t lie (they rarely do).
Jeter’s hitting isn’t the only thing that’s declined in the last two-plus seasons. In 2009, he quietly had a very good defensive season, as he posted a respectable 6.4 UZR and three defensive runs saved. Since the start of 2010, his defense has been atrocious. So far this year, he has a -9.2 UZR and -7 defensive runs saved.
If you want the short version of this long story, here it is: Jeter is not an impact player anymore. If his name wasn’t Derek Jeter, he’d be just another guy in pinstripes, and he’d probably be hearing the boo birds on a semi-regular basis at Yankee Stadium.
The bright side is that Jeter is still very much of use to the Yankees as a sort of figurehead. He’s the captain of the team. His teammates are supposed to rally behind him, and they trust him to lead by example (even if he can’t do that anymore).
Regardless of what he does at the plate or in the field, this is a role Jeter has to keep playing. He may not be able to play like Derek Jeter anymore, but he can help the Yankees as long as keeps being Derek Jeter. He can still lead this team by virtue of his name and his number, and damn the stats.
Leading, for the record, is not the same as carrying. Carrying a team means doing it all by yourself. Leading a team means holding up your end of the bargain and getting a lot of help from your teammates. The road goes both ways, as opposed to just one way.
Goodness knows Jeter could use some help from the rest of the 2012 Yankees. This Yankees team is as flat and as mediocre as any Yankees team I can remember, and their problems are legitimate problems. There are a lot of small numbers attached to players with very big contracts, and the team as a whole has looked like the walking dead since Mariano Rivera was lost for the season. The month of May has been pretty rough.
We’ve seen the Yankees pull this kind of trick before. Many times, in fact, yet they’ve always found a way to turn things around. Jeter has always been there to help, as he’s been a kind of crutch for the Yankees to lean on when times got tough.
They can’t ask him to be that guy anymore. He might be able to keep the Yankees afloat in spurts, but not for a whole 162-game season.
If these Yankees want to win this season, they need to come to their captain’s aid. He’s no longer capable of coming to theirs.
If you want to talk baseball and/or other highly underrated Steven Spielberg movies, hit me up on Twitter.
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