MLB

Latest setback for Yankees’ Jeter casts doubt on future

Few, if anyone, have better grasped baseball’s fundamental nature than Derek Jeter. A lack of emotion, the ability to shake off whatever occurred the prior day, serves you extremely well.

So perhaps Jeter, in this dark hour, still possesses the cold blood to appreciate this reality: Thursday’s setback was more devastating to him, personally, than it was to his team.

If you’re a Yankees fan, today you probably should worry more about your captain and less about your ball club.

“I’m happy with Nixy. I’m happy with Nuny,” general manager Brian Cashman said, referring to Jayson Nix and Eduardo Nunez. “But I would be happier with Derek.”

Cashman delivered the news, before the Yankees finished their series with Arizona at Yankee Stadium, that Jeter had suffered a “small crack” in the area of his left ankle that he fractured in last year’s American League Championship Series Game 1.

The reality is that, because of that injury, the Yankees never knew what to expect of Jeter in 2013. It would’ve been folly to pencil him in for another 216 hits he delivered in 2012, for anything approaching the 133 starts at shortstop and 25 at designated hitter that he made while turning 38.

We’re continuing to appreciate just how heavy a toll Jeter and the Yankees exacted by pushing him so hard last year, starting him in 66 of the final 67 games in their successful effort to hold off Baltimore and capture the AL East. We’re certain Jeter will express no regrets over those decisions and the consequences. Whether his determination to return by Opening Day actually caused this setback is an open question, one that will be asked of the captain next week when he addresses the media at Yankee Stadium.

Cashman said Jeter will return “sometime after the All-Star break,” refusing to get any more specific. Who knows? Jeter’s future is now only slightly more certain than that of Alex Rodriguez, who is both rehabilitating from major hip surgery and challenging Major League Baseball’s considerable efforts to nail him in the Biogenesis scandal.

We don’t know whether Jeter, his left ankle such an ongoing issue, can ever again be an everyday shortstop, let alone an All-Star. We don’t know, with his 3,304 career hits, when — or if — he’ll pass Eddie Collins (3,315), let alone make a run at hit king Pete Rose (4,256).

Yes, yes, we’re talking about the amazing Jeter, and it would be beyond foolhardy to write him off altogether. But these are stark realities we’re discussing here. Facts, not emotions. The narrative last October, and then again this March, was that Jeter would return in April, and now he won’t be back before July.

The fact is that, at this moment, there are no healthy, available options that are clearly superior to Nunez, who entered last night’s 6-2 loss to the Diamondbacks with a not-awful .323 on-base percentage, but(but an awful .280 slugging percentage) wound up making his first error in eight starts at shortstop.

Cashman declined to pull the trigger on a 2010 trade for Cliff Lee in part because the Mariners wanted Nunez. The general manager will finally get a significant opportunity to see what he has in Nunez — that is, assuming Nunez, who already has left two games after getting hit with pitches, can stay on the field.

“It’s what I’m looking for all my life, to play all season,” Nunez said yesterday.

The bar for shortstops has been set so low, with supply dropping, that Nunez and his backup Nix might be able to not hurt the Yankees with their play relative to that of other teams’ shortstops. If they can’t meet that standard, and if Jeter’s comeback shows no progress? Well, maybe Cleveland’s Asdrubal Cabrera, signed through next year, will become available. Or maybe the Yankees will think much bigger and look into a trade for Colorado’s Troy Tulowitzki, who wears number 2 in Jeter’s honor. More likely, Cashman’s Yankees will look for smaller solutions by which they can tread water.

Jeter’s immediate future won’t decide the fate of these Yankees. Off to an encouraging start, Cashman’s club still can refute its many skeptics (myself included).

If the Yankees move on without Jeter, if he never again contributes substantially to a playoff berth? The suspected ice in his veins, which helped make him an all-time player, will enable him to understand that’s how the game goes.