Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

With all the recent Derek Jeter hullabaloo making up for the rather muted covid-induction, I was thinking...
Knowing what we know today and the scope of their careers, who would you pick for your SS if it is day 1 of their career (Real baseball, not SOM)?

Yes I know this is a very NY-centric question and many would say who cares...give me Cal. Although I don't even consider ARod a Yankee even though he was born in NY, but that's just me.

Jeter had a strange script--for all his less than stellar modern objective stats, it is quite amazing he is the Yankee hits leader, the first to win an all star MVP, and seriously--a dinger on #3000 and a walk-off final at bat?

But these two players, both personally and professionally, had a remarkable convergence to 2004 and later divergence IMO that gave a glimpse into the baseball things that are not objectively measured, and how players react. This was made especially clear in their post-season performances and fan acceptance. In the post season, ARod was mostly a shell of his reg season stats (and was not reliable during regular season "crunch moments"), while Jeter was about at his career averages. I'll give ARod some credit though--he did accept moving to 3B...and stuck with the team, unlike some other very good players who got chewed up in NY.

So if you had to choose, whaddya think

I mean Jeter had an excellent career but Rodriguez is maybe top 10 all-time regardless of position. There's no real argument for Jeter analytically.

Anytime these two come up I think about how when Rodriguez first arrived in NY he was maybe the best fielding shortstop in the league while Jeter was maybe the worst, yet Jeter refused to move. It was one of the most selfish, team-sabotaging decisions I ever saw a star player make. And yet Jeter is the one with the spotless reputation as the selfless team-first guy. Rodriguez obviously has his own reputational problems that are mostly deserved, but I never understood why Jeter got a free pass for that one.

Rodriguez is a Yankee btw, no one else wants to claim him.

I get it...analytically I agree.
If choosing ARod is the right choice with such a glaring disparity, then one would reasonably have to also conclude the Yankees would have made more playoff appearances, won more championships and overall been more successful. And if not, then I guess there is the rub.

But if I were an exec and had to choose, I'd choose Jeter every time.
Mostly because of seeing them both play and what effect they each had on their teams. That isn't captured in a stat.
Maybe in W-L% and championships, but certainly that's not something that can be correlated.

Clearly I am biased and not necessarily rational about it. I admit it.

MaxPower wrote:...It was one of the most selfish, team-sabotaging decisions I ever saw a star player make. And yet Jeter is the one with the spotless reputation as the selfless team-first guy. Rodriguez obviously has his own reputational problems that are mostly deserved, but I never understood why Jeter got a free pass for that one.

This is the most under-reported event in Jeter's otherwise well managed public relations career--DJ was very vocal that he was not going to move--I found that interesting at the time.

You guys probably know about Win Probability Added (WPA), basically just track how players do situationally in terms of affecting their team's win probability. Guy gets a hit, debit the pitcher and credit the hitter for whatever the change in win probability is. It's a bit crude but can help determine how "clutch" a guy really is, that type of thing. So, within the last few years Baseball Reference added WPA to their postseason stats, but they also added Championship Win Probability Added (cWPA), which is much the same as WPA but tracks every postseason event in terms of its effect on winning the championship, rather than just the individual game. Anyway I just pulled up Jeter and Rodriguez fully expecting Jeter's cWPA to dwarf Rodriguez's, but *record scratch*

Jeter: +1.2%
Rodriguez: +17.7%

And this isn't even accounting for defense. I specifically remember one of the games in that World Series against Philly ending on a groundball up the middle that any other shortstop would've gotten to... Obviously he did make other great defensive plays and contributed a lot to all those rings, but man, was not expecting those cWPA numbers.

Funny you mention it because I was on BBRef as well and I was astonished too and almost put it in the first post. As I said, the inconsistency(?) is I would have to conclude that they would have been more successful with Arod all those years.

I can't conclude that qualitatively though. I saw ARod knock in many runs and make stellar plays in 10-2 wins. I also seem to remember just as many baserunning mistakes, bad decisions on cutoffs, and chokes at key moments when all we needed was a bloop hit or a sac fly. The weird push/glove slap incident on the basepaths was an example in the 2004 ALCS that cost them the game. His behavior in big moments reminded me of Tino Martinez when he first arrived--out of control and outside of the moment.

I recall very few of those moments from Jeter. Yes a few, but by and large, when the game was on the line--regular or post season, he rarely made the wrong decision in the field and on the basepaths or batter box when it mattered most. If all that was need was a bloop hit, somehow, that's what we got. Or if an unusually stellar D was called for, he made it.

Again, bias on display but watching him and ARod every day...it was clear as a bell.

If I'm picking a strat-o-matic team I pick ARod. If I'm picking a real life team with human-human interactions, I pick Jeter every day of the week and twice on Sunday. WAR is not the end all/be all in the real world. Same argument would go for picking Wagner vs Cobb, Frisch vs Hornsby, and Dimaggio vs. Williams.

They can both pound sand.

I agree djmacb. I am trying to understand why I would make such a choice in the face of the data. And second, the data says the Yankees would have won more games and possibly more championships with ARod. I just cannot wrap my head around that and I find it interesting.

Steve--I get it. Sorry man!

I agree makeup and interpersonal skills count for something, I just can't imagine them counting for enough wins to make up the difference in raw production. If it was a beer league I'd probably choose Jeter. It's not like there's really a wrong answer though. The Blazers definitely wish they would've drafted Jordan, but were the Rockets really kicking themselves for taking Olajuwon? Either way you're getting an all-time great.