One Baseball Hall of Fame voter jukes out New York Yankees fans by leaving Derek Jeter off the ballot via a tremendous prank.
Felix DeJesus decided to have a little fun with his Baseball Hall of Fame ballot this year.
The President of the Spanish Sports Network originally handed in a nine-man ballot. He was the only voter at the time to leave New York Yankees‘ legend Derek Jeter off his ballot.
Happy Holidays to everyone ! pic.twitter.com/Kymg1aOgVt
— Felix DeJesus (@FelixDeJesusMLB) December 24, 2019
Maybe next year pic.twitter.com/Lpfao4gkqA
— Felix DeJesus (@FelixDeJesusMLB) December 11, 2019
This had many Yankees fans up in arms. How could a voter leave Derek Jeter off his ballot? He won five world series, he’s a 14-time All-Star, five-time Gold Glove, five-time Silver Slugger and he has over 3,000 hits. Nobody should be able to leave him off their ballot.
Some of those numbers are skewed. Jeter did top 3,000 hits, but it took him 17 years to accomplish the feat. Many sabermetricians call stats like that accumulating. Simply because a player accumulates many years played doesn’t mean they were necessarily good.
Jeter also didn’t deserve any of his five Gold Gloves. Jeter won Gold Gloves in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2009 and 2010. He had a DRS of -13, -27, -16, 3, and -5 in those years. Jeter was one of the worst defensive shortstops of his era.
In the five years he won Gold Gloves, Jeter ranked bottom three defensively in the league three times, bottom 10 once and 16th in the league the other. He never came close to even being a top 10 defensive shortstop let alone the best one in the AL.
Obviously, Jeter is a Hall of Fame-caliber player. He is one of the greatest shortstops in MLB history. His hitting ability may have been the greatest of any shortstop ever. Nevertheless, there are flaws in his game.
DeJesus isn’t one of the voters who buy into that argument. After weeks of teasing and joking with Yankees fans on Twitter, he finally revealed his full ballot.
Ok baseball fans relax ?. In all seriousness these are the 10. pic.twitter.com/pnPnRaopCv
— Felix DeJesus (@FelixDeJesusMLB) December 24, 2019
Derek Jeter remained on 100% of ballots.
Players need to appear on at least 75% of ballots to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jeter is a near-lock to secure that many votes.
Jan. 21, 2020 is when the final votes will be revealed. In the meantime, here is how the known votes currently shake out:
With 62 ballots revealed/~15.0% of the vote known:
Jeter – 100%
Walker – 85.5%
Schilling – 85.5%
BB/RC – 75.8%
—
Vizquel – 46.8%
Manny – 43.5%
Rolen – 40.3%
Helton – 35.5%
Kent – 32.3%
Sheffield – 30.6%
Wagner – 29.0%
Andruw – 22.6%
Sosa – 21%
Tracker: https://t.co/bp1RXBnrHI— Ryan Thibodaux (@NotMrTibbs) December 26, 2019
