He wasn't biting, having already decided to stop talking about his decision to junk his new, no-stride approach. But, finally, he reached for what he considered a fitting analogy.
"You want to know what I think?" he said. "I think (Albert) Pujols is done. He's never going to hit again."
At the time, of course, Pujols, was making headlines by slumping badly, looking more like a pitcher at the plate than the game's most feared hitter. Jeter's sarcasm was obvious, but, forever guarded as he is, he immediately felt compelled to say, "Don't write that. I'm not serious."
"Thanks, Derek," I said. "I couldn't tell."
He laughed and changed the subject, but he'd made his point: In Jeter's mind his return to form was as sure a bet as it was for Pujols.
Since then the Cardinals slugger has responded as expected, knocking the ball out of the park with regularity, again raising the question of how St. Louis can afford to not pay him whatever it takes to re-sign him.
Jeter, however, has done nothing of the kind. Instead the Yankee captain continues to raise an entirely different question. That is, when is it no longer too early to attach significance to his slow start?
Of course, the way the Yankees are going, hitting home runs at a record pace, you also have to ask another question: Does it matter if Jeter isn't quite Jeter anymore?
With five more home runs in a 15-3 win over the Orioles Saturday night, including two from a reborn Russell Martin, the Yankees not only lead the majors with 35 longballs but have hit the most in club history through 17 games.
Jeter, meanwhile, has one extra-base hit, a double, in 68 at-bats. Saturday night he had a single in four at-bats to raise his batting average to .221.
Those numbers would be shrugged off as early and ugly if he hadn't fallen off to .270 last year, sparking so much debate about whether age was catching up with him. Instead they have to be at least somewhat alarming to the Yankee brass, which reluctantly gave Jeter that three-year, $51 million contract in the winter.
Perhaps most worrisome, ground-ball outs are once again a huge issue.
Going into Saturday night's game, according to FanGraphs.com, 73% of Jeter's balls in play were ground balls, by far the highest percentage in the majors. Only Royals' light-hitting shortstop Alcides Escobar, at 69%, is above 65% among all other players.
And that was before Jeter grounded out three more times, to go with a single to right and a walk.
It's significant because, while Jeter has always been a ground-ball hitter, his ground-ball percentage rose dramatically last season. He'd never been above 60% in his career, and then last year, when he seemed to go months without hitting the ball out of the infield, that percentage went to 66.
Essentially that's what prompted Jeter to work with hitting coach Kevin Long on the no-stride approach, both to keep from jamming himself by striding too far and also to give himself more time to get his hands extended, especially on inside pitches.
And while he looked good at times with the new approach in spring training, Jeter felt he was thinking about it too much when the season began, and went back to his old style when he didn't get immediate results.
So now you keep asking if this just really is more evidence that his hand/bat speed has slowed as he approaches his 37th birthday.
"It looks a lot like last year so far," said a scout at Saturday night's game. "He's not getting to the ball on time. I'm not ready to say he won't figure it out and have a good year, but the longer it goes on, the more you have to think age is a big part of it."
Jeter, for his part, is sticking to his decision not to talk about it.
"Nah," he said Saturday, "I'd rather not."
Jeter is not going to hit .221, we all know that. But I was convinced he'd have a bounce-back season because he loves nothing more than proving people wrong about him. Nearly a month into the season, I'm not convinced of anything anymore.
