Stats are for geeks.

Back to Ian O'Connor's claim that Alex Rodriguez is the, ahem, "anti-Jeter" because ARod is paralyzed by fear and conscious of his image and a choker who can't make Little League plays in October:

"His play in October, especially when measured against the big-game guts of Derek Jeter, never did anything to help his cause. The slap of Bronson Arroyo's glove. The drop of Orlando Cabrera's bouncer. If only to disarm the heavily-armed critics surrounding his locker after his embarrassing Division Series performance against the Angels last October, Rodriguez likened himself to 'a dog'"

It seems to me if you're discussing Alex Rodriguez's postseason performance, then the first place you'd start is with Alex Rodriguez's postseason performance.

Let's go ahead and measure the postseason stats of Derek Jeter against those of Alex Rodriguez:
ARod: .305 ba, .393 ob%, .534 slugging%.

Jeter: .307 ba, .379 ob%, .463 slugging%.

I think most intelligent observers would exchange two points in batting average for 14 extra ob% points and 71 extra slugging% points. But without even discussing who's better, it's obvious at first glance that both have performed excellently in the postseason.

The difference in terms of production, of course, is that Jeter has had far more postseason appearances.

ARod has 118 at-bats with 6 hrs, 9 doubles, 0 triples, 16 rbis, and 19 runs.

Jeter has 462 at-bats with 16 hrs, 18 doubles, 3 triples, 47 rbis, and 81 runs.

The math is actually quite convenient for us. Multiply ARod's stats by 4 and you'll see he has been almost exactly as productive as Jeter per plate appearance. (If you need help, that translates to 24 hrs, 36 doubles, 0 triples, 64 rbis, and 76 runs.)

There ya go. Was that so hard? Go ahead and compare. ARod's postseason stats measure up almost exactly to Jeter's.


Now, one might argue that ARod's postseason numbers don't meet high expectations (after all, isn't ARod better than Jeter in the regular season?), but they're really not too far off. The power numbers are not quite what one would expect in 100+ at-bats from a man who has 400 homeruns by his 30th birthday, but even the power numbers aren't too far off.

Point being, the stats speak for themselves and any simplistic analysis ought to belie the idea that ARod has a history of choking in October.

I don't know if ARod has more "guts" than Jeter and I'm also not quite sure how to measure that. I'll leave that for image-conscious writers like Ian O'Connor. O'Connor seems more interested in analyzing press conferences than watching baseball games.