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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins

There have been many excellent words written in this thread about the great Future Hall of Famer Derek Sanderson Jeter. I have been extremely fortunate to have watched him play for the team that I love so much, in the sport that I love so much.

Quite frankly, I could not possibly care any less about what a professional jackass like Keith Olberman says about this wonderful ballplayer. How can Keith Olberman call himself a fan of The Glorious New York Yankees and have any doubt about what this player has meant to this most excellent franchise? Similarly, I could not care less about any statistics that say he was deficient in (name an area). He was the Captain of the club. He was an extremely vital cog in the winning of five (5) World Championships. Was he as great as Mickey Charles Mantle? Or Joe DiMaggio? Or Babe Ruth? Or Lou Gehrig?

Probably not. But who cares?

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1923-1927-1928-1932-1936-1937-1938-1939
1941-1943-1947-1949-1950-1951-1952-1953
1956-1958-1961-1962-1977-1978-1996-1998
1999-2000-2009
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XXI - XXV - XLII - XLVI

In his time, there were better hitters than Jeter, there were better baserunners than Jeter, there were better fielders than Jeter, but there were no better baseball players than Jeter. If you don't understand that, you don't understand the game.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I think your last two statements about sums it up, Joe Orr.

Regarding the latter, I think the same could be said for Paul Konerko and his time with the White Sox.

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I disagree.

Unless you're assuming things about Steroids and excluding guys.


Albert Pujols pretty much did everything Jeter did including the part everyone loves about being the unassuming strong leader of a team that won multiple titles.

Im not tearing down Jeter at all. And he was probably the most important player of his time.

But Id say Albert was a better baseball player

Well, they're very different players. I just don't see that Pujols had the impact that Jeter did. The Cardinals actually improved when Pujols left.

We've gotten to this place- right or wrong- where the overriding view of the game is centered on statistics and things that are outside that realm or unmeasurable are often mocked or considered "meaningless". Smartass goofs yukking it up saying shit like, "How do you know Jeter had great intangibles if intangibles can't be measured?" You know how you know? You watch a lot of fucking baseball.

To hear a lot of guys tell it the Yankees had a bunch of good teams that Jeter simply happened to be on. As if he was Charlie Silvera or some shit. No, the Yankees had a bunch of great teams largely because of Derek Jeter and replacing him with a guy who had a higher dWAR or UZR or more "runs created" wasn't going to make the Yankees better. Of that, I am certain.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I agree.


Not to mention he had some monster statistical years.

Championship year WAR
96: 3.3 (rookie of year)
98: 7.9 (3rd in MVP behind two roid guys )
99: 8.0
00: 4.6
09: 6.5


Highest WAR on a World Series team in 98, 99, and 09 (even as his position was seeing historical production)

Only reason I would say they improved would be because of the pitching and him leaving has nothing to do with that (well, Michael Wacha was the pick they got as compensation, so I guess that isn't totally true). The offense in 2011 was a force to be reckoned with. 2012 was good but lacked that one player who could change the outcome of the game every time he took the plate (Beltran was that guy at times but not on the same level as Pujols IMO) and the 2013 team rode the RISP train all the way to the World Series without ever really being all that great.

I'd kill to have Pujols in the middle of this team's lineup.

You're a younger guy so obviously your take is likely to be more based on raw production numbers than mine is. And your take might be right. I just don't look at the game as a bunch of separate components existing side by side, but rather as a single unit constructed from component parts. I would suggest the possibility that a team centered around Yadier Molina might have certain capabilities that a team centered around Albert Pujols lacks. Again, it may or may not be true, but it is a possibility.

I think you can see a real life example of the effect in reverse with the removal of Cespedes from the Oakland batting order. It doesn't make sense that they fell so far offensively based solely upon the difference between his numbers and those of the guy(s) that have replaced him. Now, one might argue, well, Moss and Donaldson stopped producing. That has nothing to do with Cespedes. You could argue that it is simply coincidence. But I don't think so. His value and impact on that order were greater than his personal numbers suggested.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

So, your argument is that taking one of (arguably) the top 10 players in MLB history out of the lineup was actually an improvement for St. Louis?

There's no argument about it. It actually happened.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

And that was just because they got rid of Pujols? Not all of the other changes they made?

I'm not sure what capabilities such a team would have that a team with Yadi being the 2nd or 3rd guy behind Pujols didn't.

Numbers be damned...at least in this regard...for once we agree on something. Albert was a presence that scared the other team's pitcher. It meant the guys in front of him were going to see better pitches and the guys behind him were likely going to have a runner on the base to drive in. Outside of his home run derby he put on in Game 3, Pujols was a bum in the first five games of the World Series. But Texas continued to pitch him like he was playing out of his mind, because he was Albert. Lance Berkman reaped the rewards of that decision handsomely.

Agreed. And by a team centered around Molina I didn't mean strictly from the perspective of the batting order. Obviously, a prime Pujols was going to be the focus of any lineup he was in. But the entire character of a team changes based upon the guys who are on it.

To address Big Chicagoan further, the stats revolution, or whatever you want to call it has caused people to view players as individual entities rather than as parts of a larger whole. For example, as a Sox fan, I hated the Carlos Lee- Podsednik trade. In a vacuum, it is just awful. It's silly and stupid. But I can honestly say, I don't think the Sox win that World Series with Lee in left instead of Podsednik. Maybe they win two in '06 and '08. Who knows? But on the club that did win, Podsednik was just a good fit. But he wasn't better than Carlos Lee in 2005.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

They won 2 WS with Pujols. They have won 0 WS without him. They are not better.

You're not one of those guys who thinks there's the World Series winner and then there's 29 losers, are you?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

To further expand for JORR, from 2011 to 2012, 6 of 8 in the starting lineup changed, 3 of 5 starting rotation changed, and the coaching staff changed.

A lot of those changes were predicated on allowing Pujols to walk. Baseball is a funny game.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

This makes me think we aren't arguing the same thing, so this will probably come off as splitting hairs, but it's what I do...

The Cards were better off letting Pujols walk and spending that money on locking up Yadi, locking up Wainwright, signing Beltran, etc. There is no doubt in my mind on that. So, in that sense, we agree.

But if the argument is as it was worded...that the teams since he left have been better than the teams he was on, that I would argue against. Especially if you are going to attribute said improvement to his departure. I'd put more stock in the fact that the rotation gained Wainwright (who was hurt in 2011) and lost Edwin Jackson than anything they did in the lineup.

The knew it was time to let Pujols go. But the other things they did can't be divorced fron that fact.

Jackson wasn't terrible for your guys, was he?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

In the regular season he delivered, so I guess it wasn't a horrible move. I just remember the horrible feeling I got whenever he started a playoff game...luckily he was getting pulled after two or three innings it seemed so that feeling didn't last very long.

Now, in 2012 he was neck and neck with Kozma for being the MVP for the Cards in the NLDS.