Derek Jeter’s Double Play Condition
Heading into the 2009 season, Joe Girardi knew he had a small problem on his hands. By most measures, his Nos. 1 and 2 hitters, Johnny Damon and Derek Jeter, ranked among the best in the league. In 2008, Damon posted a .375 OBP, a solid mark from the leadoff spot. Jeter, even in a down year, had a .363 OBP. They were both proven players who figured to get on base plenty for the power bats in the middle of the order. The problem was, Damon’s on-base skills sometimes went for naught. Jeter simply grounded into too many double plays.
It’s expected that Jeter, a groundball hitter, will hit into his share of twin killings. When he was younger he used his above-average speed to keep that mark in the low double digits. As he crossed the age-30 barrier, however, that number started to rise. In 2007, he grounded into a double play in 14 percent of his opportunities, and in 2008 that rose to 18 percent. Worse, because Damon got on base so frequently Jeter found himself in many double play situations — once every 4.94 plate appearances.
Girardi didn’t want to see his leadoff hitter eliminated so frequently. It would kill rallies and take men off base for their new No.3 hitter, Mark Teixeira. As it turned out, the World Baseball Classic, in which Jeter participated by Damon did not, gave Girardi his opening. Maybe he read John Walsh’s article on double play opportunities, maybe he didn’t. In that piece, Walsh showed that Damon is historically good at avoiding the double play. A leadoff man much of his life, he hasn’t faced tons of situations, but when he does face them he tends to avoid making two outs. When Jeter returned from the WBC he found himself in the leadoff spot, with Damon hitting behind him.
The outcome was as good as it could have been. Jeter still grounded into a double play in 17 percent of his opportunities, but he faced those situations only once every 6.75 PA. It saved the Yankees a few outs in the 2009 season. Even when Damon departed after the season and the Yankees acquired career leadoff man Curtis Granderson to take his place, there was little question of who would bat first. There was just no way Girardi would move Jeter out of that spot after he had performed so well in 2009.
This year we have seen a strange development in this case. In 2009, the Yankees’ No. 9 hitters posted a .309 OBP, which is part of the reason why Jeter saw fewer double play opportunities. In 2010, that number is up to .324, mainly because Brett Gardner has frequented that spot. Moreover, Jeter’s groundball percentage has risen more than 10 points this season, to 67.2%. Combined with yet another year of slowing physically and it sounds like a surefire recipe for a bevy of double plays. Yet that has not been the case at all.
Jeter has faced a double play situation once every 5.86 plate appearances, and has grounded into one eight times. That is a 14 percent mark, his lowest since 2007. That includes his two double play grounders last night. If he keeps up this pace he would finish with 17, one fewer than last season. The two double plays last night make it a bit tougher to get a read on his pace, too. After all, before then he had grounded into six double plays in 55 opportunities, 11 percent. For all we know he could drop down to that rate for the rest of the season. Or, of course, he could ground into double plays in five of his next 10 opportunities and end the season with an inflated rate. Such are the perils of situational stats like these.
It still seems odd, though, that Jeter has avoided double plays this year despite conditions that indicate that he’d hit into more. More base runners and more ground balls points to more double plays. We still have plenty of time to determine whether this is a fluke — for instance, the No. 9 hitter frequently reaches with two outs. Something tells me it is. I just don’t see how you can see more runners on base and hit the ball on the ground more and end up hitting into fewer double plays. During the course of an entire season, I suspect, we’ll see Jeter’s rate around the 17, 18 percent we saw in 2008 and 2009.
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I would imagine that some small percentage of a players GIDP rate is dependent on the speed of runners on base. With Gardner being faster than basically everyone he is probably accounting for part of the decrease.
The speed of the runner on base doesn’t matter so much for ground ball double plays as that runner is the easy out. What’s more likely is that Gardner is frequently stealing when Jeter is up.
He’s not hitting into DPs because he’s too busy getting outs every other way.
When you are talking about events that happen 20 or so times a year, a difference of 1 or 2 could be a 5-10% difference, so you shouldn’t get caught up in the exact numbers.
Double plays should show large sample size fluctuations.
Also Gardner probably steals a lot. So when he comes up to bat it’s a dp op, but when he hits the ball it isn’t.
To the last point, I’m pretty sure that if Gardner steals then the DP situation doesn’t get counted. It would count for the hit and run, but I don’t recall that happening very much, if at all, this season.
yeah, I think you answered your own question. With Gardner frequently the guy on base in front of him, he’s obviously not going to ground into as many double plays as he would if there was a slow catcher hitting in that spot.
does the speed of the lead runner really dictate whether a DP gets turned or not? not in instances when Girardi sends the runner, obviously, but even an average speed runner probably avoids a bunch of DP’s if he’s running before the pitch.
it’s the batter’s speed, not the lead runner’s speed, that determines if the 2nd out is recorded.
Well, if there were only 2 times this year where Jeter avoided double plays because Gardner happened to be running when Jeter hit what would otherwise have been a double play, that’s enough to lower his rate from 17% to the current 14%. It doesn’t have to be an instance where Girardi’s sending the runner, just a spot that Gardner’s running and Jeter swings and hits a ground ball. Now, I haven’t seen many Yankees games and have nothing to back this up, but it seems to me with any speed guy who makes a lot of attempts to steal bases, that there end up being plenty of instances throughout the year where double plays are avoided in that manner. And in this case, to explain the discrepancy, you only need 2.
A bigger problem is Jeter’s 67% GB rate, far above his career norms of 56.5 percent. Even though he is not grounding into many many DPs, probably because Gardner is probably doing enough to not get doubled up in the front end, or he is probably beating them out, he is making too many outs because of that. No wonder that his OBP looks less than stellar in a long time: he is making more contact, drawing fewer walks in the process, and when he is in fact making contact, he is hitting too many balls to the ground. A career BABiP of .358 is now in the lower .300s. Probably called aging.
Rare event happening slightly more rarely! – how’s that for a rewrite of the title.
So if Jeter hits into a DP his next chance, he’s back to 16%…why would you even try to measure his “pace” based on 50-60 chances this year, instead of assumably more than 1000 in his career? Just a strange article – his DP rate isn’t even that low (since 2007 – ooooh), and not really noteworthy in anyway I can figure aside from wanting to put Jeter’s name in a title of an artcile to increase hits.
And the conclusion – that his rate will likely be close to his recent full-season history – again, why even write this article? At least put in the graphs, showing his career rates – I love the graphs.
For a site that gets bashed for being redundant for the constant small sample size disclaimer, FG authors get a lot of unnecessary criticism on the articles like this. He’s obviously not trying to make a strong case for any one conclusion. They like to point out some outliers around the league and throw out a hypothesis and leave it up to us to spitball. Articles like the Angels clutchiness, IFF%, etc.
In regards to the Gardner speed factor:
He isn’t just getting on-base at a great clip (.402 OBP), he’s also getting in scoring position at an above average rate. Of the times he’s been on base (106) he’s got into scoring position 33.9% of the time – above the league average of 27.9%.
I determine this by taking XBH and second base steals and dividing that number over times on-base:
(XBH+SB2) / (H+BB+HBP) = SPOT (Scoring Position Obtained Technique)
Gardner’s .339 SPOT make’s him extremely dangerous and keeps Jeter from worrying about hitting into DPs too often.
At 57 this season, Jeter’s on pace to finish near his 107 mark from last year. His previous total opportunities were 134 (2008), 151 (2007), 144 (2006), 113 (2005), 138 (2004), 91 (2003), 120 (2002), 104 (2001). Jeter missed April and good chunk of May in 2003 with dislocated shoulder.
His career average (not counting 2010 or 1995) is 128.5.
This season isn’t an outlier as much as it is a result of the lineup Jeter is in.
+1 to Dan.
Jeter has slowed, but he is not yet slow. There are only a few groundballs (considering trajectory and location) that will turn into outs on both Gardner and Jeter.
Gardner’s speed also gets enough respect that the opposing defense maybe be opting for the sure out at first rather than trying to turn two. As you said, with SSS situational stats like this, one or two instances can skew the %.
Maybe a way to cut down Jeter’s double play ratio even further would be to send Gardner more often. I would be interested in a stat showing how often Gardner steals second base. I feel like he does not always take advantage of the opportunity of stealing.
He’s stolen 24 bases on 122 opportunities. An opportunity is defined as a steal of 2nd or 3rd base. 23 steals were of 2B the remaining steal was of Home.
Under Baserunning:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gardnbr01-bat.shtml
Wouldn’t it be more instructive to look at his fielder’s-choice-with-less-than-two-outs rate?
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