We all know about the recent firestorm that has erupted out of Yankees' camp regarding the report from a bunch of Penn State professors who branded Derek Jeter as the worst defensive short stop in baseball. As a Yankee fan I wanted to just chalk it up to another case of stat heads trying to tear Jeter down because he is a Hall of Famer who doesn't fit in their prototype of what a player should be. But, after calming down a bit and thinking about it logically, while I don't agree that he is THE WORST (I believe Julio Lugo at least to be far worse than Jeter), he's probably down at the bottom rung (DEFENSIVELY SPEAKING ONLY). Now we can sit here and argue that even the stat heads insist there's really no way agreed upon way to quantify defense and he has won a couple of Gold Gloves. Well I'm not a number cruncher so I can't argue the first point. But as for the Gold Gloves, to me those have been a joke of an award since Rafael Palmeiro won the award in 1999 despite playing only 28 games at first base.

Keep in mind, his other qualities, the leadership, the offense, the "Jeter" make him a player almost every team would drool over the chance to get. In fact, if you look at the other AL contenders, Seattle, the Angels, the Indians, Boston, and Detroit; they would all take Jeter over their current short stops (Escobar, Aybar, Peralta, Lugo, Renteria). So what does this report mean? Nothing really. Even Jeter, who usually doesn't say much of anything, conceded that he stunk defensively last year. What came next might be something that no Yankee hater wants to hear. Jeter increased his work ethic.

From the New York Post: He rededicated himself in the offseason with exercises designed to improve his lateral quickness and first-step explosiveness. One Yankee official saw this version of Jeter and said, "He set the clock back five years."

"I'm a lot quicker, a lot more agile," Jeter said. "Only time will tell, but that is what I worked on."

No one should be surprised if Jeter's whole game, including his defense, soars in 2008. The two best defensive seasons of his career, as measured by most modern metrics, were 2004-05. It should not be viewed as coincidence that those were Alex Rodriguez's first two seasons as a Yankee. Now A-Rod has re-upped for 10 years and Jeter has arrived in camp looking so good that Rodriguez, citing the conditioning, predicted an MVP win for Jeter.
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I said in an earlier blog that the thought of a Manny Ramirez who is focused on showing an improved game as he enters his contract years would terrify me - by the way, I'm curious now if with Boras as his agent the Red Sox will pick up Manny's option year just to prevent Boras from asking for 12 years $450 million; but what about a rededicated Jeter. One with a chip on his shoulder? That certainly can't be good news for Yankee-haters who are salivating at the prospect of the Yankees falling apart.