Joe Mauer grabbed 27 of 28 first place votes, and took home AL MVP honors today by a rather wide margin. Mark Teixeira came in a distant second, while Derek Jeter trailed him for third place. Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers finished fourth, and got the only other first place vote. I’m calling Detroit bias.
Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, Robinson Cano, and CC Sabathia also received top 10 votes. Mauer was the deserving winner, no doubt about it. (You can view the full voting results right here.)
Just a few hours ago, we were talking about low-level rumors concerning a Derek Jeter contract extension. Later in the day, pictures emerged that showed Jeter could really use the dough. As you can see, he’s been reduced to begging for money on the streets of Coney Island. And his hair grew out since last week.
Nah, I’m just kidding you. Derek’s filming a movie. The film, called The Other Guys, stars Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell as two cops who, in the words of The Post, “are permanently benched after Wahlberg’s character wrongly shoots Jeter in the leg after seeing him walking around with a bat.” Jeter plays a future washed-up version of himself.
Click here for a rather amusing photogallery of scenes from the movie shoot. With that scraggly long hair and oversized puffy coat, Derek has never looked better.
Yesterday afternoon, to nearly no fanfare, Major League Baseball announced the winners of the 2009 Silver Slugger awards. Among the American League winners were Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter, and the rest were your typical mix of good hitters, popular players and Torii Hunter. No one wrote a 900-word rant on Baseball Prospectus about the inanities of the awards; no one on The Book Blog wrote a sarcastic press release about the awards. They were simply ignored.
So my question is this: Why do so many get up in arms over Gold Gloves and not just ignore them as we do the Silver Sluggers? Both awards are fatally flawed; the winners are chosen by the coaches and managers in each league and not by people who are either more neutral or exposed to more games by the simple fact that they’re not on the field. The selection process doesn’t make sense, and the awards are basically industry recognition of popularity and a job decently well done. It’s hardly a coincidence that six players in the AL won both Silver Sluggers and Gold Gloves. These aren’t objective awards; they aren’t meant to be; and everyone should just come to grips with that reality.
The Internet can be a dangerous place during the Hot Stove League. Anyone with a computer and an idea can start a rumor, and it’s tough to know what information is reliable and accurate and what is not. Even established reporters — Jon Heyman comes to mind — tend to tie teams to many available big names, and we’re left trying to sort out noise from reality.
Late last night, we came upon an update on Twitter from someone who calls herself TheSportsDiva23 and with the initials SW. This person says she covers the Yankees but cannot reveal her name. After an extensive look back through her 2400 updates, we felt comfortable enough mentioning this update not so much to report it as a bona fide rumor but to use it as a starting point for a discussion on Derek Jeter.
First, the rumors: According to two posts on this person’s Twitter timeline (1, 2), the Yankees may be gearing up to offer Derek Jeter a three-year deal worth $60 million. Supposedly, this deal would be wrapped up before Thanksgiving.
We don’t know if this deal would supplant the final year of Jeter’s current contract and extend him for two more seasons at $20 million per. We don’t know if this deal would be a three-year extension to carry Jeter through 2013, his age 39 season. We don’t, in fact, know if we should even trust this source at all.
So then why even mention it all, regular readers of RAB might wonder. After all, we tend to shy away from rumors we don’t believe have legs. Now, this anonymous person’s claim may not have legs, but to extend Derek Jeter is a question we’ve pondered this season. In early September, we noted that the Yanks planned to take care of Jeter but probably wouldn’t — and shouldn’t — extend him until after his contract runs out.
I still believe that the Yanks should wait until after next year to extend Derek Jeter. After all, as a 35-year-old short stop — the oldest player to win a World Series at that position in over half a century — Jeter is ripe for more money than he deserves. He just set the Yanks’ career hits record, and he should place in the top five in the AL MVP voting. Jeter’s agent should want to sign that extension now while the Yanks should want to wait a year.
But let’s say the Yanks would rather not allow their captain to touch free agency and don’t want a lame duck season swirling over their heads. Is a $60 million offer that covers the 2010-2012 period reasonable? For Jeter, those seasons are going to be his ages 36-38 years, but he probably won’t readily move off of short stop. Whether that is a liability or a benefit for the Yanks will depend entirely on Derek’s offense prowess.
Since 2006, Derek has earned a per annum salary of over $20 million. The Yanks, in fact, have doled out approximately $85.4 million over the last four seasons to their captain while getting back $88.8 million in production, according to Fangraphs. To continue to pay him a lofty salary would be to pay him for services rendered and not, at this point in his career, expected return and value. Considering who he is, the Yanks can get away with overpaying Jeter if it comes to it.
And so we’re left with a rumor from an unnamed source we are led to believe is a Twitter account of someone close to the Yankees. If it’s real, indications suggested that it could be Suzyn Waldman; if it’s fake, well, that’s quite an undertaking. Either way, we can still consider if the franchise should extend Jeter now or wait until after next year.
In the end, I take the rumor with a giant grain of salt and assume, until we start to hear otherwise, that it has no legs. But those in charge of the Yankees are probably giving some thought to re-upping with Derek Jeter now. His asking price might be too high, but he’s going to get overpaid no matter what. Better, perhaps, to get it over with.
Although the Gold Glove award is one of the least objective awards handed out in baseball, it’s still some postseason hardware, and considering the Yanks’ defensive woes in recent years, it’s nice to see some Bombers win. Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira have both taken home Gold Glove awards today for their respective decisions. Jeter, not known for his defense, some improved range at short this year and now owns four Gold Gloves. This is Teixeira’s third. The rest of the winners and, eventually, the voting results can be found here at MLB.com.
Update: Once again, Baggarly is wrong. Thanks to commenter Alex for pointing it out. After escalators, Manny Ramirez was the highest paid player in 2004 and won the World Series. That’s twice now for Baggarly.
Because baseball loves its stats, and because the Elias Sports Bureau keeps every stat imaginable, we often hear off-beat statistical happenings. Player A is hitting .345 in the second half in night games, for instance. We also get historical milestones, such as, Player B was the first Panama-born player to record six straight outs in Game 6 of the World Series. Of the many that surfaced this year regarding the Yankees, one got more airtime than others: no team has won a World Series with a 35-year-old shortstop since 1955. Sure enough, it happened again in 2009.
The 2009 Yankees had another first-time-in-a-long-time milestone as well. According to Andrew Baggarly*, the last time the World Series champions also had the highest paid player in the game was the ’86 Mets. They had Gary Carter at $2.8 million, less than a tenth of A-Rod’s 2009 salary. All of this is a friendly reminder to not think that just because something hasn’t happened in a while that there’s some causal reason for it.
Hat tip to Pinto for the pointers.
* I will never be able to hear Baggarly’s name and not think back to this report. He ran with an unconfirmed rumor that “Sabathia has declined the Yankees’ six-year, $140 million offer.” While that might have technically been true — Sabathia ended up signing for more — it was just horrible timing on Baggarly’s part. Cashman flew to San Francisco that very night and got to work on Sabathia’s contract.
It’s only a matter of time before Derek Jeter is somehow immortalized in New York. Surely he’ll get his plaque in Monument Park. Maybe he’ll get a street named after him, or a wing in a hospital or something like that. But what about a bridge?
Bronx leaders are trying to get the soon-to-be-built East 153rd St. bridge named after the Yankee captain, with borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. saying “There have been conversations at the community board, and I know the idea is being examined. The 512-ft long bridge will connect the Metro North tracks at East 153rd St. and Grand Concourse.
It’s not quite the Joe D. Highway, but pretty cool nonetheless.