Comments on: You can’t blame Jeter

By: Andy Van Slyke

Andy Van Slyke — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:08:20 +0000

If this blog is part of the newspaper, then Peter should be professional also.

By: FYI

FYI — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:51:47 +0000

Nate,
Not really. You just remember the playoffs (and one was rip right at the second-baseman) last year and yesterday. Look at his stats..

By: Nate

Nate — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:41:33 +0000

Whether you can blame Jeter for yesterday or not, he does ground into a lot of double plays.

By: FYI

FYI — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:27:48 +0000

Jeter averages roughly 13 DP a year (highs of 21 last year and 19 in 2004) in just under 600 ABs. Sometimes you can rip the ball and it goes right at a fielder or takes a bounce off the mound to the fielder. That was yesterday. Ans sometimes you hit meekly into a DP…
Jeter’s high DP numbers last year could partially be attributed to his bad leg and bad luck. Or it was his time. It’s not that Jeter is above criticism - he is not - but the criticism should be fair and logical.

By: NJ in Tampa

NJ in Tampa — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:40:36 +0000

The baseball IQ that some people who post on this blog have is amazingly low.

By: george

george — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:22:24 +0000

if the ball was it well and bounced off the mound weirdly into a DP, it has nothing to do with a trend of GIDPs. the trend indeed may be an issue; but this was just a freaky play, not a weak “rollover DP”.

the baseball gods giveth and the baseball gods taketh. when the game-winning single bounces off the mound and turns into a DP, the baseball gods are doing some taketh.

By: Dee

Dee — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:04:07 +0000

Why is it that every time a divisive topic comes up, there are always a couple people rushing in to exaggerate and twist other people’s point of view and make big proclamations that they are “not real Yankee fans” or know nothing about baseball???

Read the posts please before you jump in to crown yourself the best fan in the world. No one here has remotely suggested that Jeter should leave the team or get thrown off the bus. In fact, most of the people who have a problem with Jeter’s GIDP yesterday are regular posters here who have shown great loyalty to the team. All they are saying is that he should be under the same scrutiny as everyone else if when he wins games for us he gets all the credits. Fair is fair don’t you think?

It just bugs me when you see some people who never post to discuss baseball or a real game, except when there is a chance to jump in and declare others not as big a fan as they are. We know who you are!

By: bigjf

bigjf — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:59:38 +0000

(Note from my last post: Damon doesn’t get as many SF opportunities, but he does have a similar situation to Jeter.)

By: bigjf

bigjf — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:57:39 +0000

“like you”

Brandon, I took a quick browse to see if you understood what you were talking about, but I can see I can pretty much ignore you from here on out. The ball hit the mound and Jeter ran into some bad luck on a ball that was well on its way to being a base hit.

You talk about the 40 SF in his career? The guy has spent his career as either a 2 hitter or a leadoff man. You don’t get quite as many SF opportunities. But just to compare it to a few Yankees that do get said opportunities:

Abreu - 64
A-Rod - 74
Giambi - 72
Damon - 64

AL teams nowadays are particularly of the mindset that you pretty much always go for the base hit and don’t give away precious outs. We’ve seen some bunt attempts in this series, but you see far more sacrifice in the NL than the AL (aka the hitters’ league). So that makes OBP pretty damn important. Let’s look at those:

Giambi, Abreu, and A-Rod are great OBP guys, having career OBP of .410, .407, and .388 respectively. Wade Boggs was a great OBP guy with a .410 as well.

Jeter’s? .388! He currently gets on base over his career as much as A-Rod.

Hall of Famer Cal Ripkens career OBP? .340

Hank Aaron? .374

By the way, you know how many SF Mickey Mantle had over his career of 18 seasons? 47! (OBP = .421)

So what was your point of contention again?

By: abe

abe — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 14:47:56 +0000

I feel like people are mixing “suicide” squeeze and non-suicide version. The non-suicide version can be done without bench’s direction, as long as the Yankees have the contact play on (which I believe they had). Damon is a smart baserunner.

I don’t like suicide squeeze there, because it is a high-risk play. But the non-suicide squeeze can be done there. Also, hitting up the middle in that situation is not smart, since Indians are set up to play up the middle. There was a huge hole on the right side.

In general, one should go for a big inning whenever possible, but it was on the road with a tired bullpen, so if we could have stolen this game (yankees really didn’t deserve to win it) with one run in the ninth, it would have been huge. All it mattered was that one run. I respectfully disagree with Pete’s opinion.