Last night at Yankee Stadium, Derek Jeter swung at an 82-mph ”fastball” from R.A. Dickey and deposited it into the left-field stands, his fourth home run of the season. It also lifted his slugging percentage back above .300.

That’s right: Jeter’s slugging percentage now stands at .303. His on-base percentage remains just south of the Jeff Francoeur line at .299 and ranks 147th out of 150 qualifying players in on-base plus slugging.

And yet not once this season has his manager filled up a lineup card with the future Hall of Famer batting lower than second, never mind that heading into Labor Day the Yankees were only 3 1/2 games out of the wild card and only one other team was ahead of them.

Meanwhile, Brett Gardner, arguably the team’s most productive hitter, has started in the eight hole no less than five times and, on nine occasions, seventh.

In case you were wondering, during another shortstop legend’s final season, Cal Ripken hit fifth, sixth, or seventh in all but two of his 125 game starts in 2001, never mind that he had been a fixture as the third-place hitter for most of his career. (Moreover, the Orioles finished the season with 98 losses, so it’s not even as though it mattered where he hit in the lineup.)

Two evenings ago, CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman wrote a piece that pretty much questioned Joe Girardi’s commitment to winning, suggesting that the Yankees skipper was putting the retirement tour ahead of a postseason appearance:

Back in April, Joe Girardi talked a big game. But in the end, Girardi couldn’t deliver on his promise, not even close.
“I wasn’t hired to put on a farewell tour,” Girardi said back at the beginning of the season to the question about whether the long good-bye expected for Derek Jeter might affect Girardi’s decision making.
No, Girardi insisted. Winning games is all that counted. It was a strong sentiment, a stronger statement. But it’s one the Yankees manager couldn’t back up, not by a long shot.
In the end, Girardi batted Jeter second throughout the year despite plummeting results. Jeter, 40, stands second on the Yankees in at-bats despite ranking near the bottom of the league in offensive categories and last in baseball among 150 qualifying hitters in slugging percentage.
Jeter even DH’ed several games in Girardi’s lineup despite spending his final season as a non-threat. There is only one explanation for his continuing lineup placements. Jeter wasn’t treated like a ballplayer but a god by his manager, and that’s after he promised the opposite.
In the end, Girardi put on that farewell tour for the all-time great, and what a splendid one it was. The fans all caught more than a glimpse of Jeter, thanks to the deity treatment. And in the end, the manager hurt the Yankees’ chances to win with his fan-pleasing batting orders. . . .
Jeter wasn’t treated like a ballplayer but a god by his manager, and that’s after he promised the opposite.

It certainly appears that Girardi is taking orders from the front office, which seems to think that the franchise would rake in way more money by keeping Jeter near the top of the order (and not removing him from the game in the later innings in favor of a better defender) than trying to lock down a postseason berth.

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