Speaking of Jeter, his defense is being talked about by Alex Belth and Steve Lombardi, who makes a few good points.

Last year, Rob Neyer of ESPN.comn called Jeter a "terrible" SS - twice in the span of days, once in print in his column and once in an ESPN News interview.

I never understood the "terrible" label. ...

Further, in Baseball America's recent 2005 Best Tools Survey, League Managers selected Derek Jeter as the AL's "Best Defensive SS" - ahead of Miggy Tejada (at # 2) and Michael Young (at # 3).

Anyone who calls Jeter a terrible SS is crazy. That's just unfathomable. I mean, I could see how you could say he's not the best or he's not top 5 (even though that I don't really see), but a terrible shortstop? No way.

I've always felt that most criticisms of Jeter were either ill founded or nitpicking. This is a great, special player that we, as Yankees fans, are lucky to have. He's a very complete player. Does complete mean having the best of everything? No, it just means you do everything relatively well or better and Jeter does. On defense, he's a surehanded defender with good range and a great arm. He is capable of making any type of play - ground balls, line drives and he's, what, the best in the game on popups? To me, all facets of defense considered, he's a great defensive shortstop. Not even talking about what he does with the bat or on the basepaths (where plenty would say he's the best baserunner in the game).

Mr. Lombardi sums it up nicely here:

As a Yankees fan, at no point in time, over the last several seasons, has a ball been hit to Jeter at SS where I thought "Oh, no, why did you hit it to him?" - - the way one would think when balls were hit to the Jose Offerman or Wil Cordero types (when they were trying to play SS).

In fact, when a grounder is hit to Jeter, within normal range, my gut reaction and expectation is "that's an out." I have no fear whatsoever on a groundball to Jeter.