I respect your opinion, but I respectfully disagree. Pete Rose is one of the greatest of all time. Same with jeter. But I don't think pete rose could possess Jeter's power and hit as many home runs as him in his era or jeter's era. I also think that jeter was just in general a better hitter if you look at how many hits he averages per season and his batting average. His OBP is also slightly higher than Rose's. We all have our biases but I'm not biased. I feel that arod was a better SS than jeter and I hate arod. Maybe we should just be thankful that we got to see all these great players play ball.
I don't question that Jeter had more power than Rose in either era. I just maintain if they played in the same era, the gap in the homerun totals would be more narrow. Conversely, if they were in the same era, Rose's advantage in extra-base hits would be smaller.
In the comparison of career stats it might be helpful to remove Rose's past 5 seasons as he played until he was 44/45. Still they are statistically similar.
As I said that Rose has no adequate comparison in his own and subsequent generations, I always felt that his approach, stance, style of hitting, aggressiveness and base running (minus the stealing) make him the closest thing to Ty Cobb that the game has seen. It would have been something to see these two play against each other in a World Series.
I agree with you that A-Rod was a better ss than Jeter, which isn't to say of course that Jeter was deficient. A-Rod's range and arm were better. When he came to NY, I thought it was nevertheless wise to move A-Rod to third, not only for chemistry, but that A-Rod was better suited to make the change.
I think n interesting comparison with Jeter is Cal Ripken. Not only did their careers overlap somewhat, but they were both tall shortstops, a rarity until 20-30 years ago.
