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Keeping Score
Beyond the Tumult, Rodriguez Is a Key Contributor
from nytimes.com
By BENJAMIN HOFFMAN
Published: October 15, 2006
In the wake of the Yankees’ failure to win the American League division
series against Detroit — topping a six-year streak without a World Series
title — no player has felt the fans’ ire more than Alex Rodriguez.
The calls to trade him — or hire a new manager to get through to him — came
quickly.
Most of the criticism focused on Rodriguez’s failure to produce in clutch
situations, a significant flaw on the championship-or-bust Yankees. Even
Manager Joe Torre lost patience and batted him eighth in the Game 4 loss to
the Tigers.
But what is lost in the argument about Rodriguez is his quite significant
contribution to the Yankees. And no one benefits more from his presence than
Derek Jeter. Jeter has never been considered a top defender, despite his
sparkling reputation, and he was on a downward spiral in the years before the
Yankees acquired Rodriguez.
From 1998 to 2003, Jeter performed below the league average for shortstops
each season in a statistic called range factor per game, which shows how many
plays (putouts plus assists) a fielder makes a game. He bottomed out in 2003,
with a 3.65 RFg, a low figure in a season when the average major league
shortstop recorded a 4.13. He also turned 29.
For comparison, Rodriguez never recorded a RFg below 4.3 as a starting
shortstop, and the category has been led the last two seasons by Rafael
Furcal of the Dodgers, who had a 4.99 in 2005 and a 4.88 in 2006.
The season he turned 30, which happened to coincide with the Rodriguez trade,
Jeter suddenly turned a corner. His RFg improved to 4.32, and he was awarded
a Gold Glove. The next year, 2005, was even better, with Jeter improving to
4.56 and winning another Gold Glove. With Rodriguez struggling through a
difficult year in 2006 — and his fielding suffering — Jeter again regressed
to below average, with a 3.97 RFg.
After Rodriguez’s arrival, Jeter’s fielding percentage remained fairly
constant with his .975 career mark, meaning the only difference in his game
was that he was getting to more balls put in play.
There are two possible explanations for Jeter’s transformation from a poor
shortstop to a Gold Glove contender: either he developed more range at 30, an
age when most players are beginning to decline, or he benefited greatly from
having a Gold Glove-caliber defender at third base, which allowed him to
cheat to his left, a weakness highlighted by many scouts.
Rodriguez certainly struggled this season in clutch situations, but his
struggles were nothing that other Yankees, including Jeter, have not gone
through.
While Jeter is often talked about as one of the great clutch performers, he
has had his share of problems, including hitting .152 in close-and-late
situations in 2003, far worse than Rodriguez’s .237 average in those
situations this year.
Despite his reputation as Mr. November for a clutch hit in the 2001 World
Series, Jeter went 6 for 44 for a .136 average that year in the American
League Championship Series and World Series, which the Yankees lost to the
Arizona Diamondbacks.
Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, recently said that he would not
trade Rodriguez. “I fully expect him to be here,” Cashman said. “We’re
going to figure this thing out together.”
If Cashman decided that trading Rodriguez is the right option, getting
players in return who could match his value will be difficult.
Using the statistic called win shares, which was developed by the baseball
analyst Bill James to determine how many wins a player contributes to his
team as a hitter and defender, Rodriguez has been more valuable to the
Yankees over the last three seasons than Jeter. He has recorded 92 win shares
as a Yankee, translating roughly to 30 wins for the team. In the same amount
of time, Jeter has 85, translating to 28 wins. While a few wins may not seem
significant, in two of the last three seasons, the Yankees have won the
division by three or fewer games.
To replace Rodriguez’s average of 30.67 win shares a season since he joined
the Yankees, Cashman would have to trade for two to three players who could
combine to provide the same number. At that point the Yankees would already
be at a net loss; those shares are accounted for by one player and not spread
out over multiple positions where the Yankees have All Star-caliber players.
A player is often one good postseason from being considered a clutch hitter,
and Rodriguez may look to Barry Bonds for inspiration. Going into the 2002
playoffs, Bonds was a .196 career postseason hitter. He then proceeded to hit
eight postseason home runs and to compile a .471 batting average in the World
Series, and that stigma has been shed.
E-mail: keepingscore@nytimes.com
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