Derek Jeter

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Derek Jeter

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series: Derek Jeter

Five facts about Derek Jeter:

Derek Jeter was named to fourteen All-Star teams, starting nine of them. He received MVP votes twelve times including eight top-10 finishes. He also won the 1996 American League Rookie of the Year award, five Gold Gloves, and five Silver Sluggers.

Jeter batted .300 or better twelve times. He had an on-base percentage of .400 or better four times. Jeter scored 100 or more runs thirteen times (plus 99 runs scored in 2012), leading the league in 1998. He collected 200 or more hits eight times, leading the league twice (in 1999 and 2012).

Jeter ended his career sixth in major-league history in career hits, with 3,465, and eleventh in career runs scored, with 1,923. He is third in American League history in hits (behind Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker) and fifth in American League history in runs scored.

Jeter holds major-league career postseason records for games played (158), plate appearances (734), at bats (650), hits (200), doubles (32), triples (5, tied with two others), total bases (302), and runs scored (111).

Jeter got his 3,000th career hit on July 9, 2011. He was the second player to hit a home run for his 3,000th hit – Wade Boggs was the first. He was also the second player to go 5-for-5 in the game in which he got his 3,000th hit (he ended the game with 3,003 hits) – Craig Biggio was the first. Jeter’s final hit was an RBI single in the top of the ninth to drive in the go-ahead run in a 5-4 Yankees victory (Jeter scored or drove in 3 of the Yankees’ 5 runs in the game).

The first two tables below present Derek Jeter's career as measured by Player won-lost records, in and out of context.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWORL	pWOPA

Basic Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1995	NYA	21	15	1.0	1.6	-0.4	-0.5
1996	NYA	22	157	18.2	19.7	1.4	-0.4
1997	NYA	23	159	21.1	20.2	4.1	2.1
1998	NYA	24	149	23.1	16.8	9.3	7.3
1999	NYA	25	158	26.1	18.1	11.2	9.1
2000	NYA	26	148	20.5	16.7	6.4	4.6
2001	NYA	27	150	20.1	17.4	5.5	3.6
2002	NYA	28	157	20.3	17.6	5.5	3.6
2003	NYA	29	119	15.8	12.9	4.9	3.5
2004	NYA	30	154	22.7	18.1	7.6	5.6
2005	NYA	31	159	23.0	20.5	5.6	3.6
2006	NYA	32	154	22.7	17.0	8.4	6.5
2007	NYA	33	156	21.3	18.1	5.9	4.1
2008	NYA	34	150	18.4	17.7	3.3	1.6
2009	NYA	35	153	19.4	16.5	5.6	3.9
2010	NYA	36	157	20.3	20.0	3.3	1.4
2011	NYA	37	131	15.9	15.4	2.8	1.3
2012	NYA	38	159	20.3	19.0	4.2	2.2
2013	NYA	39	17	1.5	1.7	-0.0	-0.2
2014	NYA	40	145	15.9	18.1	0.2	-1.5
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,747	367.7	323.1	94.8	61.2
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			158	21.3	18.4	5.8	3.9
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,905	388.9	341.6	100.7	65.1

Season	Team	Age	Games	eWins	eLosses	eWORL	eWOPA

Expected Player Won-Lost Records
						Value Decomposition
1995	NYA	21	15	1.2	1.4	-0.0	-0.2
1996	NYA	22	157	18.5	19.3	2.0	0.2
1997	NYA	23	159	20.5	20.9	2.9	0.9
1998	NYA	24	149	21.9	18.0	7.1	5.1
1999	NYA	25	158	24.6	19.5	8.5	6.3
2000	NYA	26	148	19.5	17.7	4.6	2.8
2001	NYA	27	150	20.0	17.6	5.1	3.2
2002	NYA	28	157	19.6	18.3	4.1	2.2
2003	NYA	29	119	15.1	13.7	3.5	2.1
2004	NYA	30	154	21.1	19.7	4.5	2.5
2005	NYA	31	159	22.9	20.6	5.4	3.3
2006	NYA	32	154	21.4	18.3	5.8	3.9
2007	NYA	33	156	20.3	19.1	3.9	2.1
2008	NYA	34	150	18.1	18.0	2.7	1.0
2009	NYA	35	153	18.9	17.0	4.4	2.7
2010	NYA	36	157	19.7	20.6	2.1	0.2
2011	NYA	37	131	15.5	15.8	2.1	0.5
2012	NYA	38	159	20.2	19.1	3.9	1.9
2013	NYA	39	17	1.4	1.9	-0.2	-0.4
2014	NYA	40	145	15.4	18.7	-1.0	-2.6
			------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			2,747	355.6	335.2	71.4	37.8
			------	------	------	------	------
PostSeason (career)			158	20.9	18.8	5.0	3.1
			------	------	------	------	------
COMBINED			2,905	376.5	354.0	76.4	40.9

This is Derek Jeter's first year on the Hall-of-Fame ballot.

Vote Prediction

The question is not whether Derek Jeter will be elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year on the ballot. He will. The question is whether he will join long-time teammate Mariano Rivera as the second unanimous selection.

I think he will.

Player Won-Lost Records and Derek Jeter

Derek Jeter is obviously a deserving Hall of Famer. Just as an example, here are the top 11 shortstops in career eWins over positional average earned only at shortstop for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records.


Top Shortstops, eWOPA
	Player	eWins	eLosses	eWOPA
1	Cal Ripken	306.7	278.2	47.3
2	Arky Vaughan	231.6	192.6	44.3
3	Alex Rodriguez	179.5	144.4	43.1
4	Barry Larkin	281.8	252.6	38.8
5	Pee Wee Reese	271.8	241.6	38.2
6	Alan Trammell	266.5	247.6	36.5
7	Joe Cronin	266.8	238.1	36.2
8	Ernie Banks	167.2	137.3	35.2
9	Derek Jeter	347.4	330.5	34.5
10	Lou Boudreau	215.6	188.0	33.6
11	Vern Stephens	202.3	174.3	33.1

The above ranking was based on context-neutral eWins. As can be seen in the first two tables of this article, Jeter looks better when his performance is put into a team context via pWins. Just comparing career pWins to career eWins, Derek Jeters's performance translated into 12 more Yankee wins than expected.

The next table shows the players whose career pWins exceed their career eWins by the most.


Largest Career Gap, pWins minus eWins
	Player	pWins	eWins	Difference
1	Babe Ruth	498.7	481.5	17.3
2	Lefty Grove	264.3	249.6	14.7
3	Pee Wee Reese	299.9	285.5	14.4
4	Yogi Berra	246.3	233.0	13.3
5	Whitey Ford	209.4	197.0	12.3
6	Derek Jeter	367.7	355.6	12.1
7	Joe DiMaggio	287.1	275.2	11.9
8	Jim Palmer	241.5	229.8	11.8
9	Sandy Koufax	156.7	146.3	10.4
10	Lou Gehrig	310.3	300.0	10.3

So what does this table mean?

Well, certainly Jeter - and the other players on this list - played their careers with very good teams. And some of the difference here is essentially the good fortune of having good teammates - hits are more valuable when they lead to runs and runs are more valuable when they lead to wins and the extent to which hits lead to runs and runs lead to wins are driven in part by how good one's teammates are at driving one in and at how good the pitchers on one's teams are at holding leads.

That said, Jeter had several long-time teammates who played with essentially the same set of teammates (plus Jeter, of course), and none of them are on the list. Here, for example, is how Jeter compares with several of his long-time teammates.

Player	pWins	eWins	Difference	Diff. per 100 eWins

Career Gap, pWins minus eWins
Derek Jeter	367.7	355.6	12.1	3.4
Andy Pettitte	210.6	206.4	4.3	2.1
Jorge Posada	172.1	168.0	4.1	2.5
Bernie Williams	262.2	258.9	3.2	1.2

The last column of the above table is additional pWins per 100 eWins to adjust for differences in career length.

It is hard to know the extent to which this was merely dumb luck or whether there was really something special in Derek Jeter’s game that enabled him to better rise to the occasion in key situations than others, including his long-time teammates. But whether by happenstance or by skill, it is unquestionably true that Derek Jeter’s performance led to more wins than might have been expected based purely on his context-neutral statistical record, and that this gap - actual wins minus expected wins - was greater for Jeter than for any other major-league player of the last 50 years.

[note: I excluded Mariano Rivera from the above table because closers get something of a "bonus" based on the fact that they primarily only pitch in games in which their team is already winning. Rivera has a smaller absolute gap (pWins - eWins) than Jeter (obviously, given his absence from the first table), but leads Jeter in additional pWins per 100 eWins.]

Article last updated: December 4, 2019

2020 Hall of Fame Ballot Series

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