better? That's an understatement. Mo was historic at his job, Jeter was very very good at his.
I could be historically good at being a Gatorade cooler carrier, while Jeter could be very good at his. What is the connection? There are stats you could use to try measure the worth of a player even at different positions. For instance, Mariano has a career WAR of 40. Jeter is almost double at 73.
No one will deny Mariano is the best closer ever. (Though it is a relatively new invention) Similarly, Jeter was far from the greatest defender, far from the greatest hitter and his "clutch" and "leadership" abilities can be argued to be mythical. But what no one will deny, even his greatest detractors, is that he performed far above average at a most premium position for a very long time. Most would call him one of the top 5 short stops in history.
So what if someone else on the team was better for a period of time. So what if another player was better at their job than Jeter was at his. So what if Baseball writers didn't give him an MVP award (though he clearly did deserve one)? Does that detract from his insanely good career?
