Jeter’s Next Contract Is About More Than Money

On Baseball

By TYLER KEPNER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
February 14, 2010


Barton Silverman/The New York Times

Derek Jeter is entering the final season of his 10-year, $189 million deal. The Yankees say they will not negotiate a new deal until after the season.

It is, all at once, the biggest issue and the biggest nonissue that will hover over the Yankees this season: Derek Jeter is in the final year of his contract.

That fact by itself is important. But the Yankees have said for months that they will not break precedent and negotiate an extension for Jeter before his contract ends. It is a sensible stance, considering that Mariano Rivera, the indispensable closer, and Joe Girardi, the champion manager, are also on expiring contracts. It shifts the topic to the background.

In some ways, Jeter’s performance will affect the size of his next contract.
If he has another standout season, churning out hits and moving nimbly from side to side on defense, he is clearly in a stronger position. But unless he pulls a George Costanza and drags the championship trophy around the parking lot from his bumper, Jeter’s legacy is secure. He is the icon of the franchise.

The situation would be much different if it were all about performance.
Jeter will turn 37 before the All-Star break in 2011, the first season of his next contract. Only two teams have ever made the postseason with a shortstop 37 or older who played 100 games: Pee Wee Reese’s 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers and Larry Bowa’s 1984 Chicago Cubs.

Across baseball, teams have learned the folly of paying for past heroics instead of future results. Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye are two 36-year-old free agents who were productive last season but have struggled to find work this winter.

Jeter’s value is different, and the Yankees understand they must treat him as a special case. Parting ways would be devastating to their brand, but no less so to Jeter’s legacy. The Yankees and Jeter need each other, and it is hard to imagine acrimony at the bargaining table.

Jeter is the rare modern veteran for whom money has never been an issue. He was drafted by a high-revenue team, won four World Series in his first five seasons and quickly earned a 10-year, $189 million contract before free agency. It was a lavish deal, but it came without a bull’s-eye because it was not the highest in baseball. It seemed like a bargain compared with the Texas Rangers’ $252 million investment in Alex Rodriguez.

Attempting to justify the contract before his first Rangers season, in 2001, Rodriguez infamously belittled Jeter in Esquire, saying he never had to lead because — unlike Rodriguez — he was not a middle-of-the-order threat. It was a slight that started a cold war between the stars that has tempered with time.


Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

What Jeter seeks in a new deal could reflect his relationship with his teammate Alex Rodriguez, left.

Jeter always seemed to regard the sideshow around Rodriguez’s Texas contract with detached amusement. The deal’s opt-out clause caused a stir in the spring of 2007, and one day, Rodriguez squirmed as reporters dogged him about whether he would stay or go. Watching his harried teammate from across a hallway, Jeter simply smiled and shook his head.

Jeter’s ability to stay above the fray, easily accessible to the news media yet out of the firing line, is part of his mystique. In Jeter, the Yankees know they have a dependable, well-spoken, maintenance-free front man for a global business. That is part of why they will pay him handsomely after this season.

The question is how much. Jeter has talked about wanting to own a team someday, and his next contract will help in that ambition. The value of the deal will also reveal something about Jeter and his true feelings about Rodriguez.

After Rodriguez defied the Yankees and opted out of his contract in October 2007, the Yankees talked tough but eventually gave him what he wanted: a 10-year, $275 million contract that locks him up through his 42nd birthday.
The agreement was forged in the brief period when Hank Steinbrenner was heavily involved, before his more restrained brother, Hal, assumed sole authority atop the organization.

Will Jeter demand a contract that also takes him through age 42? Will he seek to make more than Rodriguez?

In a marketing agreement hatched as part of his contract, Rodriguez will earn a $6 million bonus for each of five home run milestones: 660, 714, 755 and tying and breaking Barry Bonds’s record, 762. Jeter will presumably reach 3,000 hits in 2011, with a chance at 4,000 and, perhaps, at Pete Rose’s career record of 4,256. Will he ask for a similar marketing arrangement?

Those are the subplots in the Jeter contract story, a new act in the always captivating Jeter/Rodriguez psychodrama. It is useful, though, to remember this: in general terms, Rodriguez makes things complicated and Jeter keeps things simple.

The most likely outcome is a quick resolution and a new contract that greatly enriches Jeter while preserving his spotless reputation.