Jeter to me is a Curtis Martin type player. He has been consistently above average for his entire career. He performs almost exactly the same in the postseason as the regular season as well which I guess is pretty rare. Once again consistently above average. 99 was his one legitimately great single season, but he has not come close to numbers like that since.
Jeter has put up excellent #s and has thrived on the biggest stage(until the last couple of years). Jeter is mroe like a Tom Brady, another underrated player who doesn't put up unreal #s like a manning(in Jeter's case it was like ARod and Nomar) but he comes through in the biggest games. Give me the guy w/ good reg season #s who performs in the clutch over a guy who has great reg season #s and shrinks in big situations.
absurd comparison. not only does Brady play the most important position in football, he's widely considered one of(if not the best) player in the NFL. you'd be hard pressed to find many people who would say that Jeter is the best or one of the best players in baseball. btw: jeter career reg season ops: .847 jeter career postseason ops: .843 arod career reg season ops: .962 arod career postseason ops: .927 so while you could make the argument that arod "shrinks" more in the postseason then jeter does, arod is clearly still the better player.
Brady was not considered one of the best players in the game until about a year or 2 ago and many misinformed fans still believe players like manning are better than him and that Brady is all a product of belichick. #s are nice but ARod had 1 good series against minny for us then did nothing against Bos and was abysmal against Anaheim. Jeter has struggled in recent years but go back to the dynasty years and he was in the middle of every rally and we won alot of games late. You don't even have to go back that far, in '03 he hit a big HR in the brawl game 3 of the ALCS then got us going in the come back in the 8th inning of Game 7.
Whatever you say, Jeter was in the middle of so many rallies and was a key cog on 4 World Championship teams and 6 AL pennant winners. ARod played w/ some great Seattle teams and never could even get to a WS, he joins the defending AL Champion Yankees and we can't get back to a WS. Give me the choice of jeter or ARod and I don't even have to think for a second. Heck I'd take Brosius over ARod at 3rd as Brosius came through alot for us, played great D, was a great team player and cost a fraction of what ARod costs.
Brosius had one great postseason and even taking that into account, along with his pedestrian regular season numbers he "shrunk" more then A-Rod ever did in the postseason: .744 reg season, .696 postseason(including a dismal .278 OBP %) These "great" Seattle teams that A-Rod played on managed to only win their division twice, and the first time in 95 A-Rod didn't even play. He wasn't the problem in 97(his worst year as a pro) when Randy got knocked around by the O's. The 00 Seattle team stunk, yet they still made it to the ALCS and he almost carried his team to a win over the Yanks.
he was a WS MVP and had one of the most memorable clutch HRs in WS history in 2001 so he had more than than the 1 postseason and he never wilted under the pressure, he didn't let ABs affect his fielding or baserunning the way ARod has. Correct, they had a ton of talent- the ONLY team I was ever afraid of as a Yankee fan and they couldn't get it done. he had ONE RBI in the '97 ALDS. Johnson got knocked around in Game 1 but pitched well in game 4. It was late in agmes where Seattle was beaten up and if they had a few more runs maybe it could have helped? he did have a great '00 series against the Yanks but to say that team stunk isn't fair. they had alot of talent on the team, a year later WITHOUT ARod they set an AL record for reg season wins before falling again to the Yanks.
Absolutely, he had a big HR in 01, so let's just ignore his .140 AVG and .157 OBP in the postseason that year. The point is it's not fair to put the 97 loss on "A-Rod not coming through". He hit over .300 and slugged over .500 for the series, and that's from a 21 year old that had a down regular season. That year Griffey, Buhner, Martinez and Paul Sorrento(yes, that's right) were all better hitters then A-Rod. Game 2 was really the only game they got "beaten" up late, Johnson put them in a hole in Game 1 and in Game 4 Mussina did shut down the Mariners but Johnson came out in the 1st inning and gave up a 2 spot. Their pitching stunk in 00 which is why they lost. Garcia and Halama pitched well in the Yankees series and everyone else got shelled. In 01 their pitching staff was much improved in the regular season, and they were able to replace A-Rod's production with a steroid fueled monster season from Boone, and Suzuki more or less filled the void left by Buhner as well.
This is such an absurd arguement that I struggle to read it. Junc's mistake is actually trying to argue against 3rdand15's "arguement" that Jeter is not an incredibly clutch player because his numbers go slightly down in the postseason. Of course his numbers go down--the playoffs in baseball especially feature only the cream of the crop. He isn't gonna be facing Travis Miller or Jesus Colome in the postseason. All you need to see to know that Jeter is a clutch player are some plays like his homerun in 2001, his flip against Oakland in 2001, his catch in the '96 world series, his constant rally starting and all time hits record--the notion of taking A-Rod (whose post season struggles are somewhat overstated IMO, he never got and pitches last season and the whole offense fell apart in 2004) over Jeter is 100% ridiculous.
Exactly. But after being a superstar, megacelebrity noted for his clutch play for the first 6 years of his career, from 2002 on he suddenly got stagefright
Have you been reading the thread at all? I said that A-Rod's postseason numbers took more of a tumble then Jeters, yet he was still clearly the superior player in both cases when you look at the numbers. So many of these "clutch" or "choking" players are tainted by extremely small sample sizes. Beltran for example had an amazing run in the playoffs, yet earlier this year we saw him wilt beneath a few boos from the fans at Shea. Good hitters hit, whether it's regular season or postseason. Jeter is a good hitter, and with his large number of postseason AB's his overall numbers are very good. A-Rod is a great hitter, sorry Yankee fans, just because your team isn't in the middle of a dynasty anymore doesn't diminish A-Rod.
Now that I reread my post, I can see that I misinterpreted you and I'm sorry for that. We are actually more or less in agreement.
I'd rather have a guy come up w/ a hit like that and be terrible the rest of the way than a guy who only "comes through" when his team is up 7 runs and at least Brosius didn't let his poor BA affect his fielding and base running like ARod did a year ago. They gave up 7 total runs in a 3 game sweep of Chicago. They also shut the yanks out in game 1 and had us on the ropes in game 2 but we broke out in the 8th(I think it was the 8th) and the bats came alive. had ARod and co. been able to score a few more runs in game 2 things may have been different.
Let's lay this all on the line. You're saying you'd rather have a guy whos career OPS is .200 points lower then another players, on the strength of one "big hit"(one of 8(!)hits in 57(!!) at bats that postseason). You seem like a bright guy most of the time junc, I'd like to see how you can come to the conclusion that a Brosius(.257 reg, .245 post) is more likely to come up with a "big hit" then an A-Rod(.307 reg, .305 post). a few? you mean 7. i still fail to see how an incredibly weak bullpen and some of the bigger stars faltering against the yanks is A-Rod's fault, however.
Clutch is something only Yankee fans of the last decade know anything about. They are the experts. The reason they have lost is other players getting in the way of Jeter and his clutchness, holding him back. No other reason makes sense.
