Originally Posted on the Previous Iteration of Baseball.FYI by Daniel R. Epstein
The 2020 season looks bleak for the Miami Marlins, and not just for the usual reasons. After several players visited a nightclub, 21 players and staff tested positive for COVID-19. Their season resumes on Tuesday, but they’ll be extremely shorthanded. Six roster mainstays are on the IL with either COVID-19 or undisclosed reasons, and many more have either been optioned to the alternate site or outright released. With so many players in quarantine, the club has been searching left and right for available talent just so they can field a lineup. Of course, if they’re desperate enough, they have a short2top available…
Before we make any more light out of an extraordinarily dark situation, we must note that this is all a terrible idea. When the United States began to shut down in mid-March, we had fewer than 1,000 new cases per day. In mid-June, we averaged about 15,000 new cases per day, and inexplicably started to reopen. Now, we are averaging roughly 65,000 new cases per day since mid-July. This virus is NOT under control by any means. In baseball, the Cardinals have now followed the Marlins and contracted an outbreak of their own. There are 900 players in MLB right now, all of whom are men in their 20s and 30s. If MLB’s plan didn’t anticipate that some of them might go out to a club or casino— if that’s all it takes to fail— they didn’t have a feasible plan to begin with. People are getting sick. One may have lost his career. Some may die. MLB, and really the entire country, needs to cut the losses and shut it down.
… There is precedent for someone in Derek Jeter’s position to return to the field. In basketball, Michael Jordan retired (for the second time) from the Chicago Bulls in 1998. Shortly thereafter, he became a minority owner and President of Basketball Operations for the Washington Wizards. In 2001, he relinquished the latter role and took the court for the team he co-owned for two seasons. In the NHL, Pittsburgh Penguins legend Mario Lemieux purchased his former team in 1999, two years after he retired. The following season, he laced up his skates again and participated as a player-owner for five years.
Jeter retired as a player in 2014 at the age of 40, which is substantially older than either Jordan or Lemieux when they played as part owners. Six years is also a longer layoff. Now 46, he would be the oldest position player in MLB since Julio Franco, and the second oldest to play the field since the 1930s. (Minnie Miñoso pinch-hit and played DH in his 50s, but did not field.) If he assumes the only position he has ever played, he would break Omar Vizquel’s record as the oldest shortstop in MLB history.
Suffice it to say that nothing about Jeter playing shortstop in 2020 would be pretty, especially in a blasphemous non-Yankee uniform, but these are desperate times. Let’s examine what kind of production we could expect from The Captain.
Offense
Jeter may have been an All-Star in his final season, but the honor was purely ceremonial. He hit only .256/.304/.313 that year. His wRC+ was merely 75, meaning his offense was 25% lower than league average. For context, Jeter’s career wRC+ is 119. Four pitchers posted wRC+ greater than 75 in 2019. He produced only 24 extra base hits and 35 walks in 634 plate appearances that year. By any measure, he was a bad hitter in 2014.
This was the last we saw of his famous inside-out swing in the batter’s box. For the premise of this thought exercise, we’ll assume he’s been keeping in shape, but his 2014 stats will be our starting point. Even if he had kept playing as long as Vizquel did, we would have to expect regression.
It’s important to point out that this data is influenced heavily by survivor bias. About half of these players will retire year-over-year, starting at age 40, which is why the plate appearances drop off so dramatically. The ones that remain obviously still have more left in the tank than the ones who don’t. By the time we reach age-46, the data is no longer even valid— 265 of the 308 plate appearances ever taken by a 46-year-old were Julio Franco in 2005.
From ages 40-45, there is an average of 3.1 percent regression in wRC+ each year for the players who stay in the game. Jeter’s 75 wRC+ starting point at age-40 is much lower than most 40-year-olds (keeping in mind that only some of the greatest players ever can even last that long to begin with).
In 2020, his wRC+ would be 63. In 2019, a handful of players posted a 63 wRC+, including light-hitting Rockies infielder Garrett Hampson and over-the-hill former slugger Kendrys Morales. Notorious Orioles first baseman Chris Davis’ wRC+ was 58. That’s what this article is really about. Everything up until now has been a ruse to make fun of Davis. He’s bad.
Of course, this assumes Jeter aging gracefully. He hasn’t done that, at least not in a baseball sense. The 3.1 percent expected regression is based on players who kept playing, whereas our protagonist has enjoyed a well-deserved retirement (at least from the field of play). A 63 wRC+ would be his best-case scenario, but the reality would probably be far more embarrassing and depressing.
Defense
In spite of all the jump throws, the lack of errors, the dive into the stands, the flip in the playoffs, and the five Gold Gloves, Jeter’s defense is a surefire debate accelerant. The awards and highlights are anecdotal, but his career straddled baseball’s statistical revolution. The data suggests he was quite awful as a shortstop for much of his career, and certainly had no business out there by the end. When he was still youthful and somewhat rangy, he played far too shallow in the infield, drastically limiting his ability to track down grounders. By the time he adjusted to paying further back, he was no longer as spry.
Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) captures his defense from 2003 onward. He was already 29 by then, so perhaps this is a little unfair, but he was worth -162 runs over the final 12 seasons of his career. He posted five of the 20 worst seasons ever by a shortstop in DRS. One of those was his final season, 2014, in which he cost his team 21 runs defensively (though his worst season was -27 in 2005).
There really is no frame of reference for extrapolating shortstop value into a player’s mid-40s. The only player to ever last that long at the position is Vizquel, who is unquestionably one of the finest defenders in baseball history. Jeter was certainly a better overall player than Vizquel, but with the glove there’s no contest. Our only option is to compare Jeter to himself.
Let’s excuse 2013, his age-39 season, in which he was injured for most of the year. Setting that aside, his defense declined by about 27 percent per year starting from age-37. (This is admittedly arbitrary. If we add in his -5 DRS age-36 season, the rate of decline is 84 percent. Besides, DRS and all defensive stats are highly volatile, and probably shouldn’t be used like this. Whatever. Jeter is absolutely not going to suit up for the Marlins in the first place— especially at shortstop— so this is all for fun anyway.)
There is no context for how abysmal this would be. The worst season ever by DRS was -33 by Matt Kemp in 2010, playing center field. Based on this (admittedly shoddy) math, 2020 Derek Jeter playing shortstop would be almost four times worse than that. On the 20-80 scouting scale, this is a zero. To overcome such apocalyptic defense, he would pretty much have to hit like peak Barry Bonds.
Once again, is the best-case scenario for a 46-year-old coming out of retirement to play shortstop. His offense would be terrible. His defense would be indescribably, unprecedentedly horrendous. We should all pray to the baseball gods— or whoever else you believe in— that the Marlins outbreak doesn’t worsen, not only for the health and safety of everyone, but also to ensure he doesn’t become a viable option.