No. He isn’t. There’s no way in hell Jeter can be “underrated”. I don’t care what kind of strained logic you want to create about how many people dog him. The dogs barking can’t possibly overwhelm the roaring tidal wave that is blind, unadulterated Jeter love.

It’s pure scale. There’s 10 million people in the New York area alone to drown out whatever internet nerds there are jacking Jeter’s junk.

Say you divide each of their careers into 30 PA stretches. Through 2008, both had 299 such stretches. A-Rod had a wOBA under .300 in 42 of them; Jeter in 67. A-Rod was under .330 in 66; Jeter in 103. Say you just want to look at how often they’re really bad: A-Rod had 16 stretches below .250; Jeter 33. Under .275, 30 to 45. Whether A-Rod is more streaky than Jeter or not, it doesn’t make him more likely to give you bad production over any stretch than Jeter, so unless it’s also showing up as better clutch performance somehow in the leverage sensitive numbers, I don’t see the advantage.

By your definition, a good player who performs worse in clutch situations could still be considered a clutch player and a bad player who performs better in clutch situations could still be a considered a choke artist.

Jeter’s a guy that better fits the baseball announcer b.s. that ‘ya gotta put the ball in play!’/'that pitch is too close to take!’, etc.

I think you’re right on, though, that the ‘personality’ stuff is why he’s more popular than A-Rod. And I also agree that Jeter is well above-average in terms of baseball intelligence on the field.

“The guy is an above average player every single year with unbelievable consistency.”

The funny thing to me about this, though (& not intended as a shot at you, Matt), is that A-Rod is an elite player every single year.

Clutch – How good a player does in high leverage situations.

Of course a good player is expected to do better than an average player in any situation, but why would you penalize a good player in high leverage situations in this “statistic”? A good player’s average performance could very well be more “clutch” than a poor player’s good performance.

As a completely biased and Jeter-obsessed Yankee fanatic (full disclosure), I think there are several reasons that people rate him higher than statistics might indicate:

1) Most significantly of all, I think the cause of this is his “homegrown” history and his ability to deal with the media. Some players are constantly getting into trouble for their behavior and Jeter never does. Some guys say things to the media that are taken poorly, but Jeter handles the New York media very well. Having come up with the organization and won some rings here, he has credibility and positive sentiment with the fans. To me these ARE part of the game nowadays. Not everything of importance takes place on the field and Jeter’s popularity is good for the team.

2) Jeter is a smart player. People have often assaulted his defense, specifically his range, but what people who watch the Yankees day in and day out see (and what doesn’t always show up in stats) is that Jeter plays the game with intelligence. His range may not be what it once was but he makes good decisions on the field, which is appealing to fans. As painful as it may be to see a bleeder slip under his glove, it’s much worse to watch a player throw the ball away trying to make an impossible double play or fail to make an out by throwing to the the wrong base. As someone who believes in psychology as well as stats, I think this actually helps win games. I believe that pitchers are often more rattled by stupidity behind them, as opposed to bleeders and bloops.

3) Now some stats: Jeter has averaged 152 games per year since 1996, with a .318 batting average. During that time he has never had a year where he hit below .291 or had an on-base percentage below .352. Only in 2003, when he missed time because of an injury did he have fewer than 179 hits. The guy is an above average player every single year with unbelievable consistency. His numbers in the playoffs are similar. He plays VERY consistently and that is really what I think being “clutch” is all about: it’s not necessarily about raising your level of play in “high leverage” situations, it’s about playing consistently regardless of situation. The problem people have with A-Rod is that he has huge streaks of hot and coolness.

Ultimately, the fans who “overrate” Jeter see a guy who plays every single day, always plays “the right way” (i.e. with intelligence in the field, on the base paths, at the plate, in the dugout, or at the microphone), and plays a very consistant game, where he reliably hits against all kinds of teams and pitchers in many situations.

Finally, I don’t know how you can overrate a guy who has a 121 OPS+ in 15 seasons.

I am very much against most of the ARod hate, and I like the conclusions in this post, but the methodology seems incorrect, as pointed out by Kincaid.