So far it has been a season lost to injury for Derek Jeter, but now that he's back lets prognosticate a little bit about his future. Many an article was written pondering if Jeter could catch Pete Rose when he reached the 3,000 hit milestone in 2011. He was just 37 years old at that point. Then we saw a number of articles writing off Jeter's chances with the injury he suffered in last year's playoffs, but I haven't seen a lot of investigations that go much further than the basic arithmetic. There are lots of obvious roadblocks ahead for the venerable shortstop. How much longer can he play this position? If he can't play at shortstop anymore, then where could he play given his offensive production? Jeter's contract runs out this year with a player option for 2014 at $8 million. Would the Yankees be willing to bring him back as a 40-year-old, or would he be willing to play out his career in another uniform? For the sake of my sanity, I'm going to ignore all of these obvious questions and just try to focus on the question of how many hits could Jeter amass in his career.
Rank |
Player (yrs) |
Hits |
1 |
Pete Rose (24) |
4256 |
2 |
Ty Cobb (24) |
4189 |
3 |
Hank Aaron (23) |
3771 |
4 |
Stan Musial (22) |
3630 |
5 |
Tris Speaker (22) |
3514 |
6 |
Cap Anson (27) |
3435 |
7 |
Honus Wagner (21) |
3420 |
8 |
Carl Yastrzemski (23) |
3419 |
9 |
Paul Molitor (21) |
3319 |
10 |
Eddie Collins (25) |
3315 |
11 |
Derek Jeter (19) |
3307 |
If Jeter hadn't suffered that injury last year, then you can see why people were excited with the prospect of him catching Rose. Assuming he could match Rose's 24 seasons, then the math worked out to less than Jeter's average number of hits per season to pass him. However, this didn't take into account any expectation for Jeter to decline as he reached into his 40's. I'm not going to look at advanced projection systems like PECOTA or ZiPS. Jeter has already proven how rare he is considering normally we should have seen his production decline years ago. Instead I'm going to look at the guy on the top of the list as a barometer for what we might expect out of Jeter going forward.
Pete Rose |
||||||||||
Year |
Age |
Tm |
G |
PA |
AB |
H |
BB |
SO |
BA |
OBP |
1980 |
39 |
PHI |
162 |
739 |
655 |
185 |
66 |
33 |
0.282 |
0.352 |
1981 |
40 |
PHI |
107 |
486 |
431 |
140 |
46 |
26 |
0.325 |
0.391 |
1982 |
41 |
PHI |
162 |
720 |
634 |
172 |
66 |
32 |
0.271 |
0.345 |
1983 |
42 |
PHI |
151 |
555 |
493 |
121 |
52 |
28 |
0.245 |
0.316 |
1984 |
43 |
TOT |
121 |
421 |
374 |
107 |
40 |
27 |
0.286 |
0.359 |
1984 |
43 |
MON |
95 |
314 |
278 |
72 |
31 |
20 |
0.259 |
0.334 |
1984 |
43 |
CIN |
26 |
107 |
96 |
35 |
9 |
7 |
0.365 |
0.430 |
1985 |
44 |
CIN |
119 |
501 |
405 |
107 |
86 |
35 |
0.264 |
0.395 |
1986 |
45 |
CIN |
72 |
272 |
237 |
52 |
30 |
31 |
0.219 |
0.316 |
24 Yrs |
3562 |
15890 |
14053 |
4256 |
1566 |
1143 |
0.303 |
0.375 |
||
162 Game Avg. |
162 |
723 |
639 |
194 |
71 |
52 |
0.303 |
0.375 |
To keep it simple I've just displayed Rose's age 39-45 years played, but the last two rows show his 24 year totals and 162 game averages. I was pretty young at the time, but I remember seeing Rose play in the late 70's and early 80's. I find this exercise most useful in dispelling my biases against the man. To be honest, I didn't recall how high his OBP was even at the end of his career. This stands in contrast to many other players who clearly changed their approaches when chasing personal career milestones. While his batting average clearly dipped below his career marks, Rose was still taking pitches and walking more than he was striking out. If we add up his age 39-45 seasons, this is how he looked on these metrics:
Pete Rose |
Year |
Age |
G |
PA |
AB |
H |
BB |
SO |
BA |
OBP |
80-'86 |
39-45 |
1015 |
4115 |
3603 |
991 |
426 |
239 |
0.275 |
0.344 |
|
7 Yrs Avg |
145 |
588 |
515 |
142 |
61 |
34 |
Just to give you an idea of how good that .344 OBP is in today's terms, the old Rose would be right there with Nick Swisher and Howie Kendrick on this year's OBP leader board. With the greater emphasis placed on OBP today, I wonder if his later years would be more appreciated now than he was back then. On the topic at hand, though, you can see that the number of hits per season declined a decent amount in his last years on the field. We don't know what Jeter will do from here on out, but how does he compare in the last few years with Rose's comparable seasons?
Pete Rose |
||||||||||
Year |
Age |
Tm |
G |
PA |
AB |
H |
BB |
SO |
BA |
OBP |
1975 |
34 |
CIN |
162 |
764 |
662 |
210 |
89 |
50 |
0.317 |
0.406 |
1976 |
35 |
CIN |
162 |
759 |
665 |
215 |
86 |
54 |
0.323 |
0.404 |
1977 |
36 |
CIN |
162 |
732 |
655 |
204 |
66 |
42 |
0.311 |
0.377 |
1978 |
37 |
CIN |
159 |
731 |
655 |
198 |
62 |
30 |
0.302 |
0.362 |
1979 |
38 |
PHI |
163 |
732 |
628 |
208 |
95 |
32 |
0.331 |
0.418 |
5 Yr Avg |
162 |
744 |
653 |
207 |
80 |
42 |
0.317 |
0.385 |
Derek Jeter |
||||||||||
Year |
Age |
Tm |
G |
PA |
AB |
H |
BB |
SO |
BA |
OBP |
2008 |
34 |
NYY |
150 |
668 |
596 |
179 |
52 |
85 |
0.300 |
0.363 |
2009 |
35 |
NYY |
153 |
716 |
634 |
212 |
72 |
90 |
0.334 |
0.406 |
2010 |
36 |
NYY |
157 |
739 |
663 |
179 |
63 |
106 |
0.270 |
0.340 |
2011 |
37 |
NYY |
131 |
607 |
546 |
162 |
46 |
81 |
0.297 |
0.355 |
2012 |
38 |
NYY |
159 |
740 |
683 |
216 |
45 |
90 |
0.316 |
0.362 |
5 Yr Avg |
150 |
694 |
624 |
190 |
56 |
90 |
0.304 |
0.353 |
Perhaps playing a position as demanding as shortstop has been taking its toll on Jeter's opportunity even before his injury last postseason. He already had been averaging 12 less games per season than Rose in his age 34-38 years, and all of the metrics here show him trailing Rose except for the one category you don't want to win: strikeouts. However, there is one bright spot when just looking at how many hits per plate appearance each player generated. It might not be the most eloquent way of looking at this topic, but in the end we're just interested in how many hits Jeter could generate. For those years Rose generated a hit every 3.59 plate appearances, and Jeter did the same for every 3.65. In Rose's last seven seasons, he generated a hit every 4.15 plate appearances. So what could all of this mean for Jeter looking down the road? Using Rose as the benchmark and keeping Jeter's relative performance static to him, here is how Jeter might look like assuming he plays till he's 45 years old.
Age |
Avg/PA |
PA/Hits |
|
Pete Rose |
34-38 |
744 |
3.59 |
Derek Jeter |
34-38 |
694 |
3.65 |
Pete Rose |
39-45 |
588 |
4.15 |
est. D.J. |
e39-45 |
547 |
4.22 |
These estimates assume Jeter gets the same rate of about 93% of plate appearances as Rose did in his age 34-38 years, and that the percentage rate of hits to plate appearances also holds in-line. Yes, huge assumptions are being made here, but it's still fun since we can now make a guess as to where Jeter would land on the all-time hits leader board if he plays all the way through his age 45 season. My instinct is to adjust Jeter's estimate for hits due to the fact that he can only play in about 36% of the games this season. However, Rose only played in 72 games in his final season. We don't know how Jeter's career is going to play out from here, and we're already giving him fewer opportunities since his recent trend has been below Rose's to begin with. So I'm not going to dock him for the time he missed this season. So here's how using the above table would suggest Jeter would look at the end of it all using my simplistic method.
Rank |
Player (yrs) |
Hits |
1 |
Pete Rose (24) |
4256 |
2 |
est. Derek Jeter (25) |
4214 |
3 |
Ty Cobb (24) |
4189 |
4 |
Hank Aaron (23) |
3771 |
5 |
Stan Musial (22) |
3630 |
6 |
Tris Speaker (22) |
3514 |
7 |
Cap Anson (27) |
3435 |
8 |
Honus Wagner (21) |
3420 |
9 |
Carl Yastrzemski (23) |
3419 |
10 |
Paul Molitor (21) |
3319 |
11 |
Eddie Collins (25) |
3315 |
Wow, right? Maybe it's not such a pipe dream after all. I think we know that if he really got that close, then someone would give him the shot to take the brass ring on top. If you don't believe that he can find a job into his age 45 season, then getting into the number three spot on this list would likely take about 1,958 plate appearances. At the rate we calculated before, that would equate to about 3.6 years from now.
Rose was a pretty darn good player. When you look at the end of his career, you see a player now that might be underrated considering his strong OBP production. Having said all of that, I'd love to see someone displace him from the top spot of the all-time hits leader board for a myriad of reasons. Having gone through this exercise, I can honestly say my expectation for Jeter's chances has gone up significantly. I wouldn't expect him to do it, but at least we have a framework that incorporates some expected declines in production in his 40's. He's undeniably a great player, and whatever happens from here on out I look forward to seeing just how far he can climb up that leader board.