O Captain, My Captain

Two months of the season have gone past and it’s nice to see Derek Jeter warming up.  After all the talk about his age, declining performance, and St. Jetersburg, the focus has once again become positive for Jeter. I am sure that will all change when Ian O’Connors book comes out later this summer, but for now Jeter is again playing the role of the Captain and looks much sharper at the plate that in April.

In case you were living under a rock, you know that Jeter had a terrible first month-plus of the season.  Over the last few weeks he has made some drastic improvements.  Following last night’s game where he went 2-4 with 3 runs, Jeter has pulled his batting average up to .264 on the season.  Although .264 is not where we want our team captain to be hitting; Jeter has made some big improvements since the season began.  It was only last month when his average was .221.  It may be far from his career .313 average, but there are positive signs on the horizon.

Over the last two weeks Jeter is batting .294 and during the last 7 games he is hitting .350.  Moreover, the last seven games he played have been against strong starting pitching, like King Felix, Pineda, Anderson, & Cahill.  There is a dramatic improvement between his April & May numbers as well.  His batting average jumped from .250 to .274 respectively. 

The biggest problem for Jeter during the first month or so was those weak infield hits.  He looked like he was struggling at the plate and was barely hitting the ball to the pitcher, and almost never hitting line drives.  This changed in the month of May and his slugging percentage jumped nearly 100 points from April to May. Jeter looked different at the plate following that two home run game in Texas.  In April his slugging % was a mere .272, but in May it jumped up to .371.  If you look to the month of May, he nearly doubled the amount of doubles, triples, home runs & RBI’s compared to April.

Another encouraging sign would be his numbers when leading off the game.  Jeter has a .500% on base percentage during the first at bat of the game when he is batting leadoff.  He has a .432 batting average with a .514 slugging % in the leadoff spot as well.  This gives the Yankees a huge opportunity to score runs early in the game.  If the game is about runs - Jeter is who you want in the leadoff spot!

Jeter has always been a guy to score runs and it’s no coincidence, as he basically has a 50/50 shot of getting on base to start the game.  With the Yankees lineup behind him, Jeter will continue scoring 100+ runs a year, like he has done 13 seasons over his career!  He already has 33 runs for the season and we are only a quarter of the way through. 

These leadoff numbers are even more effective when Curtis Granderson is batting behind him in the #2 spot.  Granderson has a .370 on base percentage in the 2 hole with a .648 slugging percentage.  Jeter just needs to get on base, and the Grandy man can take care of the rest!