We’ve spent the last week or so talking about two of Derek Jeter’s best individual seasons, seasons that were MVP-caliber even though he didn’t end up walking away with the award. While both seasons highlight the former captain’s ceiling as one of the best players in baseball, for our last installment in this series, I think we need to take a much broader look at his entire career.
If there’s one all-time, career-defining stat for Jeter, it’s his 3,465 hits — good for sixth all-time in baseball history. Raw hit totals are, I think, one of those areas where we see the most friction between “old school” baseball fans and sabermetricians, since the former often assumes the latter doesn’t care about hits or average, since a walk’s as good as a hit.