Derek: are you TRYING to hit into double plays?

11 GIDPs, and if it weren't for Ian Kinsler sucking, you'd have 12 GIDPs this year. What the hell is going on with you?

For your career, your LD% since 2002 has been 20.8%.

This year it's 15.9%. You've always been a groundball type hitter, but you always hit a lot of liners to go with it, so you usually hit a lot of hard grounders, too. But now those previously hard grounders that snuck through holes are hit too weakly to evade leather...or 2 outs...

Possible reason for Derek Jeter's problems:

While he's swinging at almost the identical percentage of balls in and out of the strike zone as last year, he's making contact with a higher percentage of balls out of the strike zone. That's bad. In 2006, when he hit .343, he only swung out of the strike zone 18.53% of the time, while making contact on just 52.77% of those swings. Now it's 21.24% of the time and 70.77% of those swings have resulted in contact. BAD.

His K rate is down from 16.4% to 12.1% from 2006, his should-have-been MVP season. However his walk rate's down from 10.0% to 7.0%.

Solution: Derek, stop swinging at balls out of the zone. You're being too protective at the plate. You're better off striking out more often if it means you'll be more patient and hit more line drives. Besides, it'd be real nice. As Earl Weaver would say, if you're going to hit into a double play, do the right thing and strike out.