One (Not-So-Clear) Winner In The Derek Jeter Negotiations

A few weeks back I asked NYaT's readers and Twitter followers to guess what Derek Jeter's next contract would be. The guesses were all pretty good and I thank everyone again for participating. But now that Derek Jeter has officially inked his new contract, we need a winner. Like the actual negotiations between Jeter and the Yankees, this was not as easy as I thought. I was OK with the Yankees and Jeter working out the contract, but I was interested to see who would win our last book .But before we get to a winner, let's talk a little about the end of these negotiations.

Jeter and the Yankees' brass heading to the presser (NYT)

All it took to finalize these dealings, it seems, was for the Yankees to meet face-to-face with Jeter and hammer out what SI's Jon Heyman correctly calls "a creative and complex deal." Jack Curry via Twitter seemed to be the one to break the contract details out first and it includes a bit of everything: a large amount of guaranteed money, deferred money, an option with a buyout, and incentive clauses. Despite the fact that most announcements during the Winter Meetings are actually made where the Winter Meetings occur, the New York Post's Joel Sherman says that Jeter made the Yankees go to Tampa for the announcement, certainly the first sign that something wasn't quite right in Jeter's head.

In the end, the discussion is over and Derek Jeter is a Yankee though it didn't take long for people to start pushing loads of blame on the Yankees or on Jeter--and, honestly, both are loads of crap. This is a business negotiation not a Disney movie and, honestly, if George Steinbrenner was alive, there's no guarantee this wouldn't have gone worse for Jeter and the Yankees considering the path of his first negotiations. I don't think anyone "won" here but I think in the end, that's the sign of a fair negotiation. The Yankees got their man and Jeter got paid.

So I didn't think anything would come out of Derek Jeter's presser since the man has cliches down to a science. But, to Jeter's credit, he didn't hold back and spout out lines: he told people how he felt. And how he felt was angry. Some of it was very Diva-like, but at least it felt genuine. Although I don't think the bloom is totally off the Jeter rose, I do agree with Jason@IIATMS' conclusion of the presser: "if Jeter is really as angry as he showed us yesterday, that’s a good thing for the team. An angry Jeter is a super-motivated Jeter. He wants to prove to everyone that he is still the player from 2009. I hope he’s up to the task." As I said before, I wouldn't be surprised if Jeter went out in 2011 and found a way to hit a lot of those incentive targets right away. I would think it no other way for the man who seems as motivated as any player I've seen.

Back to the contest. If you take the guaranteed deal at 3-years, $51 million ($15 M in 2010, $16 M in 2011, $17 M in 2012, plus $3 M buyout), @NYYEric becomes our winner. If you include or exclude all the deferred money, you get a different winner (it puts the AAV of the contract closer to our $16 M/year guessers). Ditto for the incentives (would make it 4/$65 and put us in a 3-way tie). But the rules stated that the contract was the closest in year/dollars combination with all the options picked up and without incentives...so the contract for our purposes is 4-years, $56 M which means that @laurenmass and Alex O are our two closest guessers. So I had to make a choice and went with Alex O, one of our frequent commenters and sometimes guest-blogger for the win. Congrats to Alex on winning the last of Jane Leavy's New York Times' bestselling book, "The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood".

One last thing as sort of a sidenote: The Common Man from The Platoon Advantage ranked the 40 greatest Yankees of all-time and put Jeter 5th. He wrote this great story inside the post: "When Derek Jeter was eligible for the draft, Hall of Famer Hal Newhouser was working for the Astros and urgently insisted Houston take him with the first overall pick. Houston thought he’d cost too much, and worked out a deal with Phil Nevin to take $700,000. Jeter was taken by and signed with the Yanks, at #6 overall, for…wait for it…$700,000. Newhouser was so angry he quit. Can you imagine an Astros double play combination of Jeter to Biggio to Bagwell?"

The combined WAR of every Astros shortstop (min 50% of games at SS) from 1996 to 2010: 5.3 (!) according to Baseball-Reference.

Derek Jeter's WAR from 1996 to 2010: 70.1 (!) according to B-R including 6 seasons where he had a WAR over 5.3.

Can you imagine...?