The End of an Era in the Bronx
From SABR member Wendy Thurm at SB Nation on September 17, 2011:
For seventeen consecutive seasons, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera have played together for the New York Yankees. Posada’s in the last year of his contract and is not expected to return to the Yankees next season, if he plays at all. In the history of professional baseball, only two other sets of teammates played together continuously for longer than Jeter, Posada & Rivera.
No other set of teammates played together in as many post-seasons or won as many World Series titles as the Yankees trio–and that’s not even counting what the Yankees might achieve in this year’s playoffs.
Detroit Tigers keystone partners Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker played together continuously for nineteen years (1977-1995), the major league record. Trammell was a six-time All-Star; Whitaker played in five consecutive mid-summer classics. Both won multiple Gold Glove and Silver Slugger Awards. But in those nineteen years, the Tigers made the playoffs only two times: 1984, when the Tigers won the World Series over the San Diego Padres; and 1987, when they lost in the American League Championship Series to the Minnesota Twins.
Two sets of teammates played together for eighteen years, but only George Brett and Frank White played those eighteen years consecutively (1973-1990), for the Kansas City Royals. More on Brett and White in a bit.
Read the full article here: http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/9/17/2427465/jeter-posada-rivera-end-of-an-era-yankees
Originally published: September 19, 2011. Last Updated: September 19, 2011.