For the second time in a week we are talking about a young player and comparing him to Derek Jeter. Earlier in the week I discussed how Dustin Pedroia of the Red Sox has the stats, and leadership intangibles, to strike up comparisons to Jeter. Today Dayn Perry of Foxsports.com takes another argument and compares Jose Reyes and Derek Jeter.

Perry, uses Bill James “win shares” to compare the two. I guess its because of the leadership intangibles of Jeter that he felt compelled to do it this way. In case you are like me and not up to date on sabermetrics, win share is defined by wikipedia as follows:

Win shares is also the name of the metric James describes in the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.

It considers statistics for players, in the context of their team, and assigns a single number to each player for his contributions for the year. All pitching, hitting and defensive contributions by the player are taken into account. Statistics are adjusted for park, league and era.

According to Perry, Reyes is superior offensively and defensively this year and has contributed 23 win shares to Jeter’s 14. I think we all know how important each is to their team. When each is on, the Yankees and Mets usually win.

The comparison at this point in their careers is not the one I would personally make. I think its unfair to Jeter, since he is a different player due to age. What if we looked at them at the same point?

Reyes is in his age 25 season. Going into today’s contest with the Phillies here are his career stats:

Reyes: .288 BA, 58 HRS, 298 RBI, .337 OBP, and 281 SB

Jeter is age 25 season had numbers of:

Jeter: .318 BA, 63 HRS, 341 RBI, approximately a .370 OBP, and 86 SB

As you can see, Jeter is the far superior player in all offensive categories. The big difference is that, by age 25, Jeter had established a great eye for the strike zone an had a .438 OBP during that 1999 (age 25 season).

Ironically, Reyes has more hits at age 25 then Jeter, but had played an extra year to that point. Reyes is clearly more talented then Jeter, but has yet to put that together to have the type of career of Captain Derek.

One caveat I will point out that Jeter, unlike Reyes, has had the opportunity to move around the lineup much more during his career. Reyes will always be a leadoff hitter, but Jeter has hit everywhere in the lineup but fifth. That will obviously impact the RBI opportunities, but still doesn’t diminish the OBP comparison.

Now, when it comes to defense, there has never been a debate who is the superior player at SS, regardless of what period of time we compare. Reyes is a complete defensive player when it comes to range, arm, and glove.

I think we need to accept that Jose Reyes is a very good player who is compared better to Honus Wagner then Derek Jeter. This doesn’t mean it will be the case forever, but Jeter and Reyes are different players that approach their at-bats in very contrasting ways. A comparison to Honus Wagner, a hall of fame player, is not necessarily an insult either. The end result is  itts too soon to say Reyes will be in Jeter’s category and unfair to compare them at the current time.