Derek Jeter Is Great by Both Old Standards and Modern Measurements

Derek Jeter is off to a great start, batting .382/.411/.618 with four home runs and 12 RBIs after the New York Yankees' first 15 games. He is 19th on the all-time hit list with 3,114 and should finish the season close the 11th spot, currently held by Willie Mays with 3,283.

Using traditional statistics, Jeter ranks among the best offensive players in history, but how does he fare when one evaluates him using selected modern statistics?

Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is the number of wins a player added to his team above what a replacement player (AAA or AAAA) would add.

Among active players, Jeter's career WAR is 70.4. Jeter's friend Alex Rodriguez (104.6), Albert Pujols (88.7), Chipper Jones (82.7) and Jim Thome (71.4) are ahead of him.

We don't need WAR to know that Jeter has been and still is among the best offensive players in the game today.

Including all players, 54 have a better WAR than Jeter, including shortstops Honus Wagner (134.5), Arky Vaughn (75.6), Bad Bill Dahlen (75.9), Robin Yount (76.9) and Cal Ripken Jr. (89.9).

Jeter's allegedly poor defense reduces his overall WAR. Offensively, it is 85.1, but defensively it is minus-14.7.

WAR, like most modern statistics, is not objective.

For example, batting average is always calculated by dividing hit by at-bats, but Baseball-Reference and Fangraphs don't determine WAR the same way.

The fact that Vaughn, Dahlen, Yount and Ripken have a higher WAR than Jeter doesn't mean they were better players than Jeter, yet there is no question that Jeter is no Wagner.

Rbat or Runs Batting is the number of runs better than average.  Here is a comparison of the above-mentioned shortstops' Rbat:

Player	RBat
Wagner	699
Vaughn	378
Jeter	311
Yount	250
Dahlen	188
Ripken	18

Jeter is an excellent base runner. Joe DiMaggio is the best example of a player that has good speed, doesn't steal many bases, but knows when to try for the extra base. Jeter isn't a prolific base thief, but he does have 339 career steals.

Rbaser purports to measure a player's effectiveness on the bases. Here are the numbers using a modern, although somewhat suspect, statistic.

Player	Rbaser
Yount	57
Jeter	51
Wagner	45
Dahlen	25
Vaughn	19
Ripken	minus-8

What does this all mean? I don't know.

It shows that Jeter ranks high among shortstops that have a high WAR, but we don't need sabermetrics to tell us that.

I guess modern statistics merely confirm what we already know. Derek Jeter will finish among the top players in career hits, batting average, games played, at-bats, runs scored, total bases, doubles, singles and stolen base percentage.

The only thing I have to know is that regardless of which statistics you prefers, all you have to do is watch Jeter play for a few games to realize his greatness.