If read my fantasy guide you’ll notice I have Derek Jeter ranked as my 20^th rated fantasy shortstop. This low ranking may come as a shock because last year he led the league in hits and was 13^th in runs scored. However, that was last year. Fantasy owners are only concerned about what a player will do and not what they have done. If Jeter didn’t fracture his ankle in Game 1 of the ALCS he would be easily be ranked higher. Unfortunately, he did fracture his ankle and has yet to play in a Spring Training game and will end this season at the age of 39.

I’m not a doctor and I haven’t seen him play yet, so I’m going to downplay the injury angle and on focus solely on his age. I expect his numbers to decline because no matter how hard we fight against it, Father Time eventually wins in the end. In order to justify my hunch I wanted to see how much of a difference in performance Hall of Fame caliber players saw during their age 39 season compared to the five seasons prior. I choose a random sample of ten players and I looked at the percent differences in their slash lines.

Their batting average, OBP and slugging decreased 4.28%, 6.62% and 9.96% respectively. Jeter’s slash line the past five years is: .291/.341/.371. If his performance declines like these ten contemporaries he’s going put up a slash line of .291/.330/.369 with a substantial decrease in power. Jeter surprisingly hit 15 home runs, the most since 2009, which was aided by an inflated 16.1% HR/FB rate. Most of his fantasy value comes from a high batting average and scoring a lot of runs. If his slash line regresses and he only belts 6-10 home runs, you have a 15^th rated shortstop; on top of all that he will be six months removed from a broken ankle and has spent the entire offseason learning how to walk again instead of training.