The idea has been around for ages. In this 2005 Sports Illustrated mailbag, Tom Verducci fields a question on it saying: It's not a totally outrageous suggestion -- Jeter is such a great athlete and he's terrific going back on pop-ups, which makes you think he'd be fine at tracking flies. But it never will happen. He is the Yankees shortstop for life. This was brought up at the time because the Yankees needed a centerfielder after 2005 was up and there was some thought that A-Rod would move to SS. But this never happened.
Then, in the winter of 2005, Bob Klapisch brought it up on ESPN.com the same day Murray Chass did in the New York Times. And it was thrown around for a while (as well as A-Rod...which, judging by his inability to catch simple pop-ups, would have been a disaster) but ultimately was thrown away when Johnny Damon shocked everyone and bolted across the Yanks/Sox rivalry.
Then Jay forwarded me this article from Christina Kahrl (why the "h" in there? is it really necessary?) which showed up in ESPN.com and Baseball Prospectus. Now the argument isn't just that the Yankees need a CF, but they need to upgrade shortstop as well because Jeter isn't as good as those Gold Gloves said he was (I'm not disputing that for a second).
Parts of this make a ton of sense. Jeter is at best OK at shortstop and he's only going to get worse as he gets older. The Yankees have a hole in CF and no one on the current roster to plug into there. Orlando Cabrera is a free agent and despite being a Type A, the Yankees would only have to give up a 4th round draft pick to get him (because the Yankees already lost rounds 1-3 to Tex, CC and AJ signings). The Yankees would improve their infield immensely by having Cabrera at SS and Tex at 1B over Jeter and Giambi. This suggestion seems to have a lot the aspects of a good, sound decision except for two itty bitty problems: we don't know if Jeter would ever actually consent to moving to CF and, much more importantly, we have no clue if Jeter would even be a semi-serviceable CF.
And that, my friends (harnessing my inner John McCain), is where the great problem lies. The argument is always, like Verducci says above, that Jeter is so good on pop-ups that he should be great on fly balls and, as Kahrl said, that Jeter has a great arm. Tell me again how that translates into the fact he'll be a great centerfielder. The fact is that if we're not sure Jeter will be a good CF, there's no reason to move him off of SS at this point: none. We don't actually have signed a better SS option. We've never seen if Jeter could play CF (I've also heard Mariano Rivera is good on fly balls, so let's stick him out there in spring training while we're at it). And let's say Jeter needs Tommy John surgery because he hurts his arm throwing the ball from the outfield (I imagine his jump-throws would be cut down considerably), wouldn't we feel stupid for taking someone out of our lineup (key word there is LINEUP) who was never in there for any type of defensive prowess in the first place. And if he sucks at CF, where do we put him then? LF? DH? The bench? We would have already signed Cabrera so we couldn't move him back to SS!
And it's not like teams don't win championships because their SS wasn't good in plus/minus. The Cards won the World Series in 2006 and the next year David Eckstein was a -14 (he was also the SS for the 2002 Champion Angels). Julio Lugo was the SS for the Red Sox in 2007. Tony Womack won one in 2001. And 1998-2000, that guy Jeter was at SS for the Yankees as well. And how about the OPS+ of those CFs that won World Series? Shane Victorino (106), Coco Crisp (83), Jim Edmonds (110), Aaron Rowand (118), Johnny Damon (117), Juan Pierre (94), Darin Erstad (86), and Steve Finley (91). That's not exactly Ruthian (or even Jeterian--his career OPS+ is 120). Maybe the Yankees can sacrifice hitting in CF if they can get fielding...I think they have enough hitting to get by. If they can find a guy like Brett Gardner who can give them and OPS+ of 100 (league average) with great speed, a big arm and overall solid defense, I think they're better doing that shifting a guy to CF who has never played there before (as long as it's not Melky, although we think he's good defensively out there, the stats seem to say otherwise).
The Yankees have one pitcher (Wang) that should produce a lot of ground balls. CC, AJ and Joba are strikeout pitchers who should get a lot of fly balls. Pettitte? The batting average for people who hit the ball infield against him last year was .101. To the OF? .625. We now have Teixeira at first who should help Jeter, A-Rod and Cano immensely with his prowess over there. Maybe Cano doesn't have to cover enough ground this year and maybe all the throws in the dirt will have a better chance of being picked up.
So let's leave Jeter exactly where he is until we find out if he can play CF.
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