And The Winner Is

The winner is not David Ortiz. Nice.
Congratulations to Yankee Captain Derek Jeter for winning the AL's Hank Aaron Award. He's the first Yankee to win the honor, and considering the fact that this is an award that recognizes the league's best offensive player, it's rather impressive considering who else was nominated. He beat out the likes of Travis Hafner, Vladimir Guerrero, Justin Morneau, Paul Konerko, and everybody's favorite cry-baby, David Ortiz. Ha ha ha.
I can hear the cries of Red Sox fans now over Papi's loss. "Jeter o won because the fans voted for him. He doesn't deserve to win. Papi is so much better offensively. Blah blah blah." The problem here is that the majority of Sox fans, if not all of them, come from the school of thought that Ortiz subscribes to. That's it all about home runs. We all remember Ortiz's comments about his chances to win the AL MVP. He said, "the guy who hits 40 home runs and knocks in 100, that's the guy you know helped your team win games." As I said back then, it's not just about the power. Baseball fans, by voting for Jeter to win this award, apparently agree. Kudos to them for being smart.
Now if you don't think that Jeter is deserving of the award, consider this. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Jeter became just the fifth player in the past 75 seasons to hit .340 or higher, drive in at least 90 runs and steal 30 or more bases in the same season. Pretty impressive. He was 3 RBI shy of 100. Not bad for a guy batting 2nd in the lineup. He was 2nd in the league in average and runs scored. He was 3rd in the league in hits and .OBP. The only stats Ortiz can stake claim to being better than Jeter in is HRs, walks, RBI, and slugging percentage. The slugging percentage ties directly into the # of HRs, so for all intent and purposes, it's the same stat. And though Ortiz had 40 more RBI than Jeter, Jeter's contributions in other statistical categories are better than Ortiz's in every statistical category. The BAVG was 57 points higher. He scored 3 more runs, had 10 more doubles, 1 more triple, 15 less strikeouts, and 33 more stolen bases. Yeah, I'll take that. And as for Ortiz having more RBI, one can argue that is only made possible by having more runners on base to knock in. There was an article in mid-September that supported this point. Here is an excerpt from the article, which was written by Steven Goldman.
"Quite often, a player's RBI total is not just an expression of how well he's hit with runners on base, but where he bats in the lineup and how often the players in front of him reached base. Alex Rodriguez has 105 RBI, normally a good total, yet, Rodriguez has seen more runners than any hitter in baseball, 513 of them. He's driven in just 14.4% of them, an average figure. Ortiz has seen the third-highest number of baserunners, 474, and driven in 16.6% of them, a good but not extraordinary percentage.
Jeter, who Ortiz derides as "not… an RBI guy," has had only 439 runners on base in front of him, the 15th-highest total in the game. Despite 34 fewer home runs than Ortiz, Jeter has driven in a slightly higher percentage of his runners,17.7%.Ortiz has driven in 9% of his runners on first (that's those home runs talking), but just 20% of his runners on second and 34% of his runners on third (that's those strikeouts talking). Jeter has driven in only 5% of his runners on first (that's the lack of power) but has plated 22% of runners on second and 46% of runners on third (that's those singles and doubles talking)."
Now that we've compared apples to apples, that pretty much puts Jeter ahead of Ortiz in the RBI category. So all Ortiz really has on the Yankee Captain is more longballs. Which if you haven't realized by now, isn't much to be in amazement of. Jeter was by far, the best offensive player in the American League in 2006.
In a few short weeks, he'll also be the most valuable one.
J-Boogie