Joe Posnanski writes about Michael Schur’s obsession with the end of Derek Jeter’s career:

How will the Yankees handle this? How will Jeter handle this? Schur concedes that he thinks about little else. “It’s absolutely fascinating, isn’t it?” he asks. Michael has gotten so little joy and so much heartache in his life out of hating Jeter. “The guy does everything right,” he says, shaking his head sadly. Hating Jeter, for Michael, for many, has been like hating libraries or like hating walkathons for good causes … you can certainly do it, I suppose, but it can’t really make you feel too good.

But now … Michael and others can see it: Terrible Ending cometh. There seems now way for boat to miss iceberg on this one. Jeter may yet have another renaissance, he may yet have another season in the sun. Or he may not. But either way, he is coming to the end as a player … and nobody seems to have an exit strategy. “I’m obsessed with it,” Michael says, and he’s as happy as a Boston fan can be with his Red Sox 8 1/2 games out. “I mean, Jeter is a student of the game. He knows the situation. But I’ve been over and over it, and there’s no way around it. The disaster is coming.”

“Well,” I say to Michael, “what if he signs a short-term deal, or what if he gets hit 3,000th hit and retires, or what if he moves to the outfield and slowly reduces his role as his skills diminish and becomes the spiritual leader of the Yankees?”

Michael Schur looks at me with this funny look of disgust.

“Yep,” he says. “It would be just like him to figure a way out, wouldn’t it?”

I don’t believe there is no exit strategy. With Jeter’s poor season, the Yankees will have an easier time convincing Derek that his days as a player are numbered. So they’ll work some kind of hybrid deal where the Yankees guarantee short term money in return for options or a lifetime job with the club once he retires. We don’t know what either side wants, because they’re both smart enough to keep their mouths shut about it. That doesn’t mean they haven’t thought about it, however.

I will take issue with one thing Posnanski writes:

Well, being in the top of the lineup this year, Derek Jeter has made 432 outs — most in baseball by 17. He probably won’t quite reach Omar Moreno’s staggering record of 550 outs in a season*, but he’s on pace for about 525 which would put him comfortably in the Top 10 all-time. It isn’t where you want to be.* So now what? Are the Yankees going to move Jeter to the seventh or eighth spot in the lineup? Will he even GO down to the seventh or eighth spot in the lineup?

Jeter is making those outs with a .332 OBP, not a .306 like Omar Moreno. He’s making lots of outs because the rest of the team is so good, he keeps getting more opportunities to make outs. It would take Derek about 75 more PA than Omar Moreno to make the same number of outs. If Jeter were on the Mariners, he would not be approaching the top ten.

That doesn’t mean that Jeter shouldn’t be moved down to the ninth spot. At this point, he’d be a great secondary leadoff man. Jeter, Gardner, Swisher followed by Teixeira and A-Rod would generate a lot of runs and save the Yankees outs.