Kevin Kernan

Kevin Kernan

MLB

Imagine Jeter going from The Flip to The Flop

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It can’t end like this for Derek Jeter.

The way the Yankees are playing, there will be no October in Jeter’s final season.

The Yankees have lost four straight heading into Friday night’s game against the Rays at Tropicana Field. In those losses, they’ve managed to score seven runs.

They are the world’s most expensive mediocre baseball team. They are eight games back of the Orioles in the AL East, that race is over. In the watered-down wild card, the Yankees are 4 behind and must jump three teams to make it to the “survivor’’ version of playoff baseball.

Jeter has played 16 Octobers and knows something about November baseball as well. October is his time. In his first five Octobers the Yankees won four World Series championships, and Jeter was the MVP of the 2000 World Series win over the Mets.

The Captain is at his best in October, where he carries a lifetime .308 postseason batting average.

The Flip was made on Oct. 13, 2001. No play better exemplifies Jeter’s winning approach, his creativeness and his ability to be in the right place at the right time.

Instead of The Flip, here in 2014, the Yankees are giving us The Flop.

They can’t stand up to the challenge.

At the age of 40, Jeter was supposed to go out the right way, playing October baseball and letting the chips fall where they may. Perhaps, Jeter would have one more heroic October in his body. Yankees fans dreamed of him going out the way he came in — his first full season in 1996 — a champion.

The Steinbrenners put a fortune on the table this past offseason to try to bring the Yankees and Jeter one more October after the lost season of 2013.

Jeter has played in 158 postseason games, essentially another entire season, and has accumulated 650 at-bats and a nice round Jeterian number of hits, 200, and a .374 on-base percentage in the biggest games of them all.

His game, though, always has been about heart and hustle and finding ways to win, not cold numbers. As he said last week, it’s not about “formula baseball,” it’s about winning.
It can’t end like this for Derek Jeter.

Jeter has been at his best in the ALDS, where he has a lifetime .343 average over 66 games. In seven World Series, he has hit .321.

Will Jeter suffer the same fate as Mariano Rivera, who did not have one final October last season, when the Yankees finished third in the AL East?

Rivera’s final appearance came in a 4-0 loss to the Rays at Yankee Stadium. Rivera had his long goodbye that night. He did not bother to pick up a baseball that final series in Houston.
It was over for Mo.

After Jeter played in just 17 games last season, this year was supposed to be different — with the addition of expensive bats of Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran, plus the monster signing of Masahiro Tanaka and the re-signing of Hiroki Kuroda. Brian Cashman spent $465 million on those parts.

Tanaka went down with an elbow injury and the punchless Yankees have managed to win just three more games than they have lost.

At this rate, Jeter’s last game in The Bronx will be Sept. 25 against the Orioles. His finale would be in Boston three days later.

The last October memory of Jeter is a painful one, his left ankle breaking as he screamed out on the infield dirt at Yankee Stadium. Jeter had to be carried off the field that night by trainer Steve Donohue and manager Joe Girardi in the 12th inning of Game 1 of the ALCS, a 6-4 loss to the Tigers.

That was Oct. 13, 2012. Exactly 11 years to the day of The Flip.

As Jeter was helped off, fans began to chant his name, making it the saddest of chants.

That is the final memory of Jeter and October baseball.

It can’t end like this for Derek Jeter.