Choose your captain: Aaron Judge vs. Derek Jeter

Being captain of the New York Yankees is an honor few players in the last thirty years have been worthy of. In fact, there have only been three. Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter, and Aaron Judge. Derek Jeter is unquestionably the winningest captain of the bunch, but I’ve liked what I’ve seen from Aaron Judge. Track record aside, let’s examine the qualities of a good captain, and who has the advantage in each category.

The first and foremost goal of any captain is to create a culture of winnings. Judge has only had one year to work on this, but the advantage goes to Jeter here. Jeter was captain from 2003-2014. They failed to make the playoffs only twice in that time period and won a world series in 2009. There are many pages left to be written in Judge’s story, but he has already missed the playoffs once in his lone season as captain. He has some work to do to create the culture of winning, but I do believe he is on the right track.

A good captain should keep the locker room in line and minimize distractions. Alex Rodriguez aside, Jeter did a nice job of “coaching” his teammates to stay out of the limelight when it comes to personal problems and keep it out of the locker room. Any problems that existed between players were dealt with behind closed doors. There were some hiccups of course, but he was able to corral his team when they needed it.

In his first season as captain, Judge’s Yankees had several blowups. Josh Donaldson was a distraction and Domingo German went on a drunken tirade destroying things in the clubhouse. Most of this is out of the captain’s control but it remains to be seen if Judge will be able to help his team avoid these distractions in the future.

If a captain is truly the face of the franchise, he should have the ears of both the manager and the front office. In just one year it has become apparent that Judge has the advantage on Jeter in this department. With Jeter this was likely intentional. He was not one to meddle in the affairs of a front office which at that time had put together team after team that competed for the world series.

Judge, on the other hand, has already been involved on multiple occasions. I’m convinced that his feedback resulted in the midseason change in hitting coach. He also met with Hal Steinbrenner after the season and I have no doubt his words resonated with the Yankees’ owner. It came out yesterday that he spoke with Cashman about emphasizing average and RBIs, which is right on the mark. It is impressive that he has taken this initiative and it might just push the front office to improve this team through acquisitions and building a better infrastructure.

Another mark of a true captain is leading by example. Both Jeter and Judge excel in this metric. Jeter played through many injuries and conducted himself with class publicly. He never let his personal life get in the way of the Yankees.

Judge is almost identical in this respect. His run through the wall injury was reminiscent of Jeter’s dive into the stands. He played through the resulting foot injury as soon as he was physically able. His public persona is clean and his private life has been free of reprehensible behavior. This one is a tie.

It’s going to be damn near impossible for anyone to unseat Jeter as the best Yankees’ captain in recent memory. What would it take? Winning would be a start. Creating a culture of winning is almost as important.

I’ve been impressed with Judge’s initiative as captain so far. Many of Jeter’s best leadership qualities did not even require verbal communication. It’s clear that Judge’s style contrasts with that. He is a communicator and feedback generator. This is a sign of the times in some ways. Every successful business wants 360-degree feedback from top to bottom these days, which was not necessarily the case when Jeter was captain.

For most, the obvious choice for captain is Jeter. As you might expect, I fall in that camp as well.  While it can be said that this was a pointless debate as the answer was clear before reading a word, it speaks to Judge’s character and tremendous leadership qualities that this discussion has even occurred. Let’s hope that when it’s all said and done, this Venn diagram has significantly more overlap, which would have to mean Judge’s Yankees did a lot of winning during his tenure as captain.