I had to laugh a bit when I read the other day that a Sports Illustrated poll of around 500 major league ballplayers had named Derek Jeter the most overrated player in baseball. That’s not because I think he is – I’m not sure he’d even make my top 10 – but rather because, like every other baseball writer around, whenever I even suggest Jeter is something less than the most dominant player in baseball, I get a lot of angry e-mails from people suggesting I know nothing about the game, and that if I were down on the field, I’d see just how great he is.

Jeter took the results with good humor, noting to the New York Post that at least he was in good company (Carlos Beltran and Alex Rodriguez finished right behind him), and given that he “won” with only 9% of the vote, the results surely aren’t to be taken all that seriously. Still, it’s an interesting bit of confirmation of the “Jeter is overrated” thesis that’s been bandied about by many over the years, and raises a reasonable question: How overrated, if at all, is The Captain?

To define our terms a bit here, we have to judge how he’s rated in the first place, and that’s tricky: It depends who you ask. Casual baseball fans, who mainly know that Jeter is the most famous player on the best team in baseball, generally rank him even with or above the likes of Albert Pujols. Columnists and broadcasters not employed by the Yankees generally don’t, but tend to argue that his value is much greater than his statistics would have you think, so much so that he’s among the very best players in the game.

Among hardcore fans, you get a huge range of opinions. Some cite his mastery of the game’s subtleties, his leadership, and his clutch ability as reasons why he ranks with anyone in the game – even A-Rod, whose numbers are almost comically superior. Others cite defensive studies to buttress claims that Jeter is barely an average player. Most fall somewhere in the middle. On the whole, the consensus opinion is probably that he doesn’t quite rank with Pujols and Rodriguez, but that he’s right up there with the rest of the game’s best, players like David Ortiz and Vladimir Guerrero.

This is a tricky argument to make, because not only has Jeter never been the best player at his own position in his own league – he’s never even been the clear second choice. During his career, Rodriguez, Nomar Garciaparra, and Miguel Tejada have all at various points been clearly superior as hitters and, to be generous, comparable as defensive players. Even today, you’d have a hard time making a case for Jeter being any better than Tejada or Texas’s Michael Young, and that’s not taking into account that Jeter is still the second-best shortstop on his side of the Yankees’ infield.

Include the catchers and second basemen – quite a few of whom have been better hitters than Jeter at different points, all of whom share similar defensive responsibilities, and (again, being generous) most of whom are comparable defensively – and you have somewhere from half a dozen to a dozen players every year just at the key defensive positions who rate ahead of Jeter.

Keep in mind that this is giving Jeter defensive credit that he probably doesn’t deserve. Don’t take my word for it, or the word of the people who watched and scored every single play made in baseball over a period of three years and came to the conclusion that Jeter was the worst defender in the game, as written about in John Dewan’s invaluable “The Fielding Bible.”

Watch a Yankees series and count how many times Jeter makes an on-balance throw, how many times you see him chasing after a ball skipping just past him to his left, and how many times you see a ball hit right at him, making sure to count up how many times the opposing shortstop does the same.

One thing Jeter has going for him is consistency. Garciaparra may have been better at one point, and Young may be better now, but Jeter’s been good all along, and that counts for a lot. The problem here is that this isn’t a very compelling argument to rate someone as among the game’s uppermost elite. Players like Pujols and Rodriguez don’t rate among the best 25 players in the game every year, they rate among the absolute best every single year.

The biggest factor Jeter has going for him, though, are his intangibles. The Captain, according to all testimony, elevates the play of those who play with him. Plus, his ability to focus in the clutch and his legendary postseason exploits are self-evident and need no explanation. I not only have no problem giving him all due credit for that, I think people who don’t are a bit batty.

The problem I have is with using that to elevate him to a level his statistics don’t support without doing so for other players. Maybe Jeter’s stats don’t tell the whole story of his play, but how does that make him Tejada’s equal? Tejada, after all, has better stats and also has a reputation as a great leader and clutch hitter. The same with Ortiz and Pujols, the same with Guerrero, the same with Ivan Rodriguez, the same with lots of players. Why don’t they get the same credit for carrying their teams to the postseason that Jeter does?

The answer is pretty obvious, and it’s probably why Jeter was named by so many players as being so overrated. It’s the same reason why (as Bill James once pointed out) so many people lobbied so passionately for Phil Rizzutto’s election to the Hall of Fame. It’s that Jeter, like Rizzutto, is treated less as a ballplayer than as a litmus test for one’s understanding of the game. Anyone can compare Jeter’s numbers to Rodriguez’s and decide for himself who is the better player, but only (so the argument implicitly goes) the true cognoscenti can tell that Jeter’s heady baserunning, willingness to dive into the stands, and habit of pumping his fists make up for the fact that Rodriguez hits three times as many home runs, drives in twice as many runs, and scores as many to boot.

This is all a lot of bunk. Jeter’s a great player, but he’s not an all-time great like Rodriguez, and at no time save in 1999 has he represented the kind of threat that players like Ortiz, Garciaparra, Guerrero, Mike Piazza, Jim Edmonds, and many others have at various points. Jeter’s great like Barry Larkin and Alan Trammell were great. That’s saying a lot – those are (or should be) Hall of Famers. And he gets all due credit for all his various prominent heroics. But he’s never the guy you worry about, the guy you don’t want to let beat you. It’s a good thing to see the players of Major League Baseball see something so obvious.

tmarchman@nysun.com