Derek Jeter needs a new glove! (Or, Juan Uribe needs a new press agent)!

Who was awarded (notice I didn't say, "won") the last three Gold Gloves for American League Shortstop? Why, it was that Yankee of Yankees, Derek Jeter! That this is a great travesty is certain, to those who observe baseball carefully and I would like to point out some reasons why.

Backstory- The holder of the Gold Glove at Shortstop for both 2002 and 2003 was a fellow by the name of Alex Rodriguez. You probably know him, hits lots of homers, is razzed by Yankee fans whenever he fails to play like Babe Ruth and Willie Mays put together? Yeah, him. ARod had been playing short for the Mariners and then the Texas Rangers but once he signed on the dotted line, the Yanks had a problem. What to do with Jeter? After all, Jeter was not much better than an average shortstop, ARod was a Gold Glover....the solution? Put the good shortstop at third, where he became a mediocre fielder, and leave the mediocre fielder at short. What? Most organizations would keep the superior player at the premium position and let Jeter move to third. But apparently Derek's ego was at stake.

In any event, all is well, for now Jeter gets the Gold Gloves and the Yankees look like they were pretty darned smart! NOT!

What makes a fielder valuable? I think this is a viable question. Is it a guy who "makes all the routine plays" with few errors? Is fielding percentage our best clue? I think not. In terms of infielders, the pitcher wants his fielders to 1) get to every ball he can grab, 2) convert that chance into an out, and 3) if possible, turn it into two out by means of a double-play.

Back in the mid-70's, the two rival shortstops for the Phils and the Reds were Larry Bowa (GG in '72 & '78) and Davey Concepcion (GG '74-'77 & '79). On season, Larry began to call Davey, "Elmer" and, finally, Concepcion asked him why?

"Because every time I look at the Reds boxscore.' Bowa replied. 'I see E - Concepcion!"

Funny but true. Concepcion usually made more errors than Bowa and had a lower fielding percentage. Still, Davey was above average in percentage. Bowa had a much better percentage than Concepcion, but got to far fewer balls and participated in fewer double plays. Who was better for their team? I suggest that according to the figures, in 100 games Dave Concepcion would convert 41 balls into outs that the average shortstop would miss, while Bowa would only convert 26 of them. That outweighs the balls that Concepcion got to that he bobbled in my opinion.

What does this have to do with Jeter? Well, I took a look at fielding stats for the year 2006 and compared range factors, fielding percentages and double plays for all shortstops who could be considered full-time players (120 games or more in 2006). I thought I would find, easily, two or three shortstops who outperformed Jeter. But I was way off. In fact, I could only find one shortstop in the entire American League who had worse defensive numbers than Jeter! (Hello, Carlos Guillen, future Tiger first-baseman). I found this to be astounding!

Derek Jeter may have been the best all-around shortstop in the AL last year because he is outstanding as both a hitter and a baserunner. He is so good at those two facets of the game they overshadow his mediocrity as a fielder. But his raw numbers make even Jhonny Peralta and Michael Young look good!

Okay, so I thought, well, maybe that was an aberration. I decided to check on the career totals of Jeter versus the guy he sent to third, ARod, plus some of the other rival shortstops in the AL. One thing Jeter could do, he could field with a decent percentage. Here are the career fielding percentages among players considered the best shortstops of the last few AL seasons compared to the total league averages of the years they've played:

Alex Rodriguez - .977 (league average .972)
Michael Young- .976 (league average .971)
Derek Jeter - .974 (league average .972)
Jhonny Peralta -.972 (league average .971)
Miguel Tejada - .970 (league average .972)
Carlos Guillen - .969 (league average .971)

So Jeter is in the middle of this crowd in percentages, which I believe is the lesser stat compared to range factor. So let's look at that! This is another rate stat, in this case, the number of outs accomplished per game.

Miguel Tejada - 4.61 (4.13)
Jhonny Peralta - 4.53 (4.10)
Alex Rodriguez - 4.42 (4.15)
Michael Young - 4.25 (4.10)
Derek Jeter - 4.08 (4.13)
Carlos Guillen - 4.04 (4.09)

Now, this is bad for Jeter and Guillen. I mean, the average shortstop includes guys like Troy Glaus who get stuck there for a few games, utility infielders, do-everything types like Chone Figgins, etc. Therefore the average shortstop wouldn't be considered an average day-after-day guy you want in the hole between third and second. Yet Guillen and Jeter both performed below that average!

By those numbers, if Tejada and ARod and Jeter all played 160 games, Rodriguez would make outs out of 51 batted balls that would safely get past Jeter. But then Tejada would get to another 26 more beyond that. So, if Rodriguez had higher fielding percentages than Jeter and got to way more baseballs, isn't he the better shortstop and shouldn't he be there instead of third? Also, maybe Jeter makes a couple less errors, is that worth the 77 outs per year Tejada gives you that Jeter can't make for you? Isn't Miggy getting the shaft and shouldn't he be getting the Gold Glove?

Well, you say, double plays are the "pitcher's friend", maybe Jeter turns a lot of those? Well, sad to say, no. In fact, Derek Jeter has never turned as many as 100 double plays in a season, a number accomplished by Tejada 7 times and by ARod 5 times. Heck, Peralta has done it and so has Young. Again, only the company of the aforementioned Guillen keeps Jeter from being alone in failure here. Double plays turned per game, career:

Alex Rodriguez - .6990
Miguel Tejada - .6702
Jhonny Peralta - .6667
Michael Young - .6280
Carlos Guillen - .5995
Derek Jeter - .5306

By fielding rates, it seems that ARod very likely deserved his Gold Gloves (and I looked a bit further, either he or Tejada should have beaten out Vizquel for the honor every year since at least 2000). Furthermore, Tejada looks like far and away the best shortstop out there defensively now, with Jeter battling Guillen for the title of worst shortstop!

But, how can this be???????

Question: Maybe Jeter plays with a lot of pitchers who are strikeout/flyball types and doesn't get many groundballs?

Answer: Well, ever hear of Chien-Ming Wang? Do guys on the Baltimore staff like Bedard and Cabrera and Louwen strike you as groundball pitchers? No way does a factor like that make such a dramatic difference, nope.

Question: You are using rates, how about a fielding system that uses totals as well???

Answer: Okay, I will present an alternate view. Fielding Win Shares!

Personally, I am more impressed with the raw numbers but here we go. I have the data from the last three years and that can only include Guillen, Tejada, Young and Jeter, since Alex moved to third in 2004 and Peralta became a regular in 2005. Again, I am only comparing the better known shortstops, those more likely to make the All-Star team.

Miguel Tejada - 18 win shares
Michael Young - 17.5
Derek Jeter - 17.5
Carlos Guillen - 12.2

I find that Tejada's 0.5 advantage over Jeter is rather mysterious when the stats make it look more like around 1.5 per year. Nevertheless...If we look at all regular AL shortstops in each year, Jeter finished 10th in 2006 and 6th in 2005. Only in 2004, which was far and away his best-ever year, did he finish in the top five, with a 3rd place finish behind Guzman of Minnesota and Crosby of Oakland. Uribe, Peralta, Cabrera, Scutaro and Tejada all finished ahead of him in 2005 and, in 2006, Peralta, Young, Cabrera, Uribe, Gonzalez, Betancourt, Tejada, Barlett and Scutaro finished ahead of him.

Zone Rating

"Zone Rating is the proportion of balls hit into a fielder's zone that he successfully converted into an out. Zone Rating was invented by John Dewan when he was CEO of Stats Inc. John is now the owner of Baseball Info Solutions, where he has revised the original Zone Rating calculation so that it now lists balls handled out of the zone (OOZ) separately (and doesn't include them in the ZR calculation) and doesn't give players extra credit for double plays (Stats had already made that change). We believe both changes improve the Zone Ratings substantially. You can read more about the revised Zone Ratings in John's Fielding Bible."

2004 American League - 9th, ahead of only Guillen and Berroa. Tejada was 5th.
2005 American League - 8th, ahead of Berroa and Young. Tejada was 5th.
2006 American League - 8th, ahead of Peralta, Berroa and Cabrera. Tejada was 6th.

By this measure, yes, Tejada is superior to the usual suspects among good hitting shortstops. Further research tells me that Juan Uribe should have won the last two Gold Gloves. But he won't because he isn't popular and isn't much of a hitter.

The truth about Derek Jeter is summed up by the excellent A Citizen's Blog, who has thus far presented a four-part series on fielding:

"Today defense is a tricky subject. It is undervalued by teams (see, my earlier comment about the differences between A-Rod and Adam Everett), and when people do focus on it, there are wildly differing opinions about what is, or is not, true. e.g.: Yankees fans and baseball traditionalists (e.g., Joe Morgan), believe that Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter is a defensive genius. His brilliant flip to home to catch Jeremy Giambi and prevent the A’s from scoring is part of the stock highlight reel on Jeter. But the sabremetric community has run the numbers and they indicate that Jeter is actually a below-average fielder. The fact that Baseball hands Derek Jeter a Gold Glove every season to signify their belief that he is the best at what he does, while the sabremetricians greet those gold gloves with derision and contempt, underscores the disconnect, the issues and problems with evaluating defense in baseball."

Back in the 50's and 60's there was a big (6'4"), slow, power-hitting first baseman named Dick Stuart. He had one all-star year and three times exceeded 30 homers and 110 RBI. But, alas, he was done in partly due to reputation. You see, he wasn't a good fielder at all, and while the average first baseman would successfully make 99 of 100 plays, Dick would make 98. Now this may not sound too bad, but with a regular first-sacker taking a lot of throws, this meant making maybe an extra 12-15 errors a year. In any event, poor Stuart was dubbed "Dr. Strangeglove" after a popular movie of the era and he never lived that down. By the time the 1964 movie came out, Stuart had gotten much better with the glove and was about average, compared to the horror he was in his first 3-4 seasons. But the new nickname stuck and his playing time and effectiveness both dropped off sharply. Did the disenhanced reputation effect him, his managers, or what? I don't know but he fell off in 1965 and never played regularly again.

I'm not saying that Derek Jeter is so bad that we should begin calling him "clank" or anything like that. If there is a Dr. Strangelove award for American League shortstops, then either Guillen or Berroa should have won that award the last couple of years. But is Derek Jeter a Gold Glover? Not if it means that he is particularly good!