JETER VS. HISTORY

This is a reprint of a Steven Goldman post on SB Nation February 18, 2014

To borrow from Kurt Vonnegut, Derek Jeter has come unstuck in time. Now that his retirement is one likely indifferent season away, we can stop worrying about what he is -- a consideration that usually involves trying to weigh his offense against his defense -- and start focusing on what he was. With nearly the whole career in the books, we can try to see where he ranks among the great shortstops in history.

Note the tacit admittance to the club of greats. The argument isn't, or shouldn't be, whether Jeter was one of the greatest ever to play the position; he was. He was not a perfect player, but nor were any of the shortstops we will encounter as we follow Jeter through a series of head-to-head encounters with the Hall of Famers and other standouts (sorry to say that's not always the same thing; apologies, Alan Trammell) who preceded him.

The question we'll attempt to get at here is, given a choice between Jeter and some other, equally or almost equally talented player, would you take him or the other guy? Some might look solely to advanced statistics such as wins above replacement to make that determination for them, but numbers only tell some of the story. We have to know who these shortstops were and the state of the game they played to make determinations across time and rescue Jeter from the inchoate realm of "great" and place him with specificity.

It should be taken for granted that these are all extraordinary players, and in abstract no team of their day would have gone wrong listing them in the lineup. However, the arrow of quality, of greater professionalization, embodying training, nutrition and conditioning, only points in one direction.

BOBBY WALLACE (1894-1918)

One of the more obscure players in the Hall of Fame, Wallace was one of the best players in St. Louis Browns history. Given that the Browns themselves have been gone for over 60 years, that Wallace’s Browns never won anything, and that his whole career was witnessed by fewer spectators than watched a typical Jeter Thursday night game against the Indians, it’s not surprising that Wallace isn’t a vivid figure even for baseball aficionados. It’s a bit like he was a really outstanding stegosaurus or triceratops -- at this great remove it’s difficult to distinguish one triceratops from another, and for most people it’s more than sufficient to say, "Man, there sure were some interesting critters back then. Like, this one, it had a bunch of horns and plates and stuff," without getting further into the details. Similarly, we might say, "There used to be a team called the Browns, and a hundred years ago they had a shortstop who was pretty good, with a strong glove for the day and he was a pretty good hitter for the position, too. Today he might have been almost as good as Omar Vizquel."

Jeter or Wallace? Jeter, for all the same reasons you’d pick him over Wagner -- or Vizquel.

HONUS WAGNER (1897-1917)

Wagner was born 140 years ago this month, was 5’11, and shaped like Gumby; the game he played only superficially resembled ours. He was a .328/.391/.467 hitter, but that doesn’t do him justice -- relative to his leagues he was Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds, Mike Trout. Yes, it was a primitive league, but he towered so far above it that he likely would have been a great player in any era. What shape that greatness would have taken is almost impossible to say.

Jeter or Wagner? Jeter. Wagner was a wonderful player, apparently a good guy as well, a captivating storyteller and ambassador for the game into the 1950s. Still, it’s impossible to separate him from the fact that he played during the Theodore Roosevelt administration against mediocre, white-only players who swung table legs instead of bats. Jeter wasn’t as dominant on either side of the ball, but we have to give some deference to the uplift in American nutrition that in a few generations greatly altered the look of the American alpha-male athlete: Derek Jeter is 6’3. In Wagner’s day there was exactly one established position player of that height, the catcher Larry McLean. McLean played 862 games; no one else played as many as 400. During Jeter’s career, 80 players 6’3 or taller have exceeded McLean’s total. To put it another way, many of the great players of yesteryear must have suffered at some point in their lives from what we would characterize as malnourishment.

RABBIT MARANVILLE (1912-1935)

Luis Aparicio without the stolen bases, Omar Vizquel without the sobriety.

Jeter or Maranville? Jeter, though Maranville probably shouldn’t be dismissed too lightly. He hit .308 in two World Series. That was only in eight games so it doesn’t really mean anything except as a symbol of the fact that at his peak (up until he was 33 or so), he wasn’t any worse with the bat than Vizquel or Aparicio. He was also a tremendous glove who played until he was 43 purely on the basis of his fielding. All the caveats that apply to the pre-integration players apply to him as well, but he was probably still a better player than his career line at first suggests.

JOE CRONIN (1926-1945)

Cronin was an excellent hitter for the position, but went through an OCD phase when he had to go down on his knees to field a grounder, and as you might imagine that could cut down on a shortstop’s range a bit. He also made sure Pee Wee Reese, property of the Red Sox, wound up a Dodger to protect his own job, and oh, yeah, was a spectacular racist who was convinced that no worthy African American players were available to Boston during his long association with that team despite Jackie Robinson coming to Fenway Park for an on-field audition before he was signed by Brooklyn. Hey, Joe Cronin: F--k you.

Jeter or Cronin? You’ve got to be kidding.

LUKE APPLING (1930-1950)

It’s hard to know how to place Appling, a right-handed hitter with extraordinary bat control who slap-hit .310 annually, peaking at .388 in 1936 while also picking up a lot of walks. The quintessential Appling story revolves around the White Sox denying him some number of baseballs -- let’s say 20 -- to give to his guests at a game, so he went to the plate and fouled 20 straight balls into the stands. There were never a lot of players who fit this description; we’re talking Appling, Stan Hack, Richie Ashburn, and closer to our own time, Brett Butler and even Pete Rose. The line is pretty much extinct now, as even baseball’s smallest players can knock the ball over the fences these days. Appling was 5’10 and hit 45 career home runs; Dustin Pedroia is two inches shorter than that and has more than twice as many homers. The deep outfield gaps that fueled Appling’s batting averages are gone now, and even if a player with his bat-handling skills came along, he might not be able to hit more than .290 or so.

Jeter or Appling? Jeter; Appling was the finest of a particular kind, but that kind is gone.

ARKY VAUGHAN (1932-1948)

An odd career. At his best, Vaughan could hit with any shortstop in history, or maybe just anyone in history -- when you hit .385/.491/.607, as Vaughan did in 1935, there isn’t a lot of room between you and the best offensive seasons ever. He wasn’t always that good, of course, though he did lead the NL in on-base percentage three times, not that anyone noticed at the time. Then there was the tiff he got into with Leo Durocher which caused him to walk out on the Dodgers in 1943 and stay home for three years. Bonus points for being called "Arky," which simply reflected his place of birth, even though he spent all but the first seven months of his childhood in California. By the same naming convention, this piece would have been about Jersey Jeter, which doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Jeter or Vaughan? Jeter, of course; he never quit.

CECIL TRAVIS (1933-1941, 1945-1947)

Travis doesn’t show up on the career lists because his career came to a dead stop due to World War II. Having become a regular at age 20 in 1934, he had piled up a .327 average and 1,370 hits through 1941, his age-27 season. Jeter hit .320 with 171 fewer hits. Travis had about a 40 percent chance of reaching 3,000 hits, but at that point the war came. He disappeared into the Army for almost four years, playing some baseball but also seeing action in Europe. By the time he was able to get back to the majors for real, he was 32 and the magic was gone.

Jeter or Travis? Jeter; we’ll never know what the rest of Travis’s career might have looked like if not for the rise of fascism (which is hardly the most tragic thing outcome of World War II, but for the purposes of this exercise only it’s pretty close).

LOU BOUDREAU (1938-1952)

One of the enduring mysteries of baseball is how a shortstop could be as slow as Boudreau -- and by reputation he was, and yet was still such a good defensive player. His MVP-winning season of 1948, in which he hit .355/.453/.534 while managing his team to a World Series championship, still stands up as one of the best by any shortstop. It was a short career, however -- 1948 was not only his best season, but also his last good one outside of the broadcast booth -- and some of his other big years came against reduced wartime competition.

Jeter or Boudreau? Jeter. We’ll never know if Boudreau could have played shortstop in the sped-up modern game, but chances are he would have wound up at second base or third.

PEE WEE REESE (1940-1958)

Credit Reese for the three prime seasons he lost to World War II and he probably would have finished his career as a slightly above-average hitter to go with what was reputed to be superb defense. Reese was a patient hitter at a time when even good pitchers walked four batters a game and had some pop despite his nickname -- if he played today he might have been Dustin Pedroia with a little more speed. He was also the Kentuckian who got over his upbringing and embraced Jackie Robinson.

Jeter or Reese? Jeter. At his best, Reese was capable of a .400 on-base percentage with double figures in home runs, but he wasn’t consistent at that level.