In today’s baseball world, there’s almost no such thing as a “franchise player,” at least if your definition of that term involves someone who spends the entirety of a lengthy career in the same uniform.

When Paul Olden announces the New York Yankees to the capacity crowd at Yankee Stadium on April 1, there will be two of those franchise players wearing pinstripes – and it will be the beginning of the end for the elder of the pair.

Mariano Rivera announced his pending retirement on Saturday, telling the world that his nineteenth season in the Majors will be his last. He’ll be leaving the game with an all-time best 608-plus career saves, but he’ll also leave it with a pair of longevity records; Rivera, Derek Jeter, and Jorge Posada were the first

We’re now in the final week of the 2012 season, which is hard to believe because it seems like just yesterday that the Yankees opened Yankee Stadium on a balmy April Friday, But, alas, there are just three road and three home dates left for the Yankees, and with six days to go, there are still four divisions and six playoff spots to be locked up…and a lot of other things going on that might make you say hmm over the final week.

Six observations for you to watch over the last six days:

-Looking at the playoff picture, there’s a bizarre symmetry. In the AL, the three 2011 division winners (Yankees, Rangers, Tigers) all lead their divisions with six days left, and the Rays are once again making a late surge out of a seemingly hopeless hole…but in the NL, none of

The Major League Baseball Draft is a fickle, fickle beast, and there’s no bigger reminder of that than Derek Jeter – in both “good” terms and “bad.”

As Jon Lane expounded upon earlier today, June 1, 2012 marks the 20^th anniversary of the Yankees selecting Jeter No. 6 overall in the 1992 MLB Draft. The Captain is going to Cooperstown, no doubt, and it’s a common chuckle to look back at the five guys taken ahead of him and wonder how that could’ve happened; sure, four of the five reached the Majors, and No. 1 overall Phil Nevin (.270-208 HR-790 RBI) had a pretty good 14-year baseball career…but none of them are DEREK FREAKIN’ JETER.

Keep that in mind come Monday, because you’ll probably hear a lot of names called that you

The Yankees have played 44 games through Wednesday night, roughly 27 percent of their 2012 schedule. And, for all the coverage their struggles, both offensively and on the mound, have garnered this year, the Bombers sit at 23-21, just a half-game behind the cutoff for a postseason berth.

But on this day off, let’s forget about that for a moment and accentuate the positive.

Taking a page from the annual MLB Awards, here are the five men that would win (at least in this blogger’s mind) the Yankees’ “First Quarter Awards” in a handful of categories.

MVP: Derek Jeter. Sure, Curtis Granderson leads the team in homers, and Raul Ibanez has been a revelation in the middle of the lineup. But The Captain has made it happen all year, and has carried over his stellar

One of the best parts about the beginning of the MLB season is the “on pace” debate. You know, the one that starts when a guy hits three homers on Opening Day and we’re reminded he’s on pace for 486.

With the calendar flipping to May 1, the first “month” of the regular season is in the books, and those debates are usually cooled off by now. But, really, why not continue them? After all, the regular season is six months long, so why not just multiply numbers out a bit (by, say, 6.1, since there are three games in October this season as well) and see where people stand?

I did just that, and in addition, broke the same totals down into a per-game average, then multiplied that by 162 in order to get the “true” pace. After doing the math and

Joe Girardi talked all spring about how he planned to rest his aging stars (specifically Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez) more often this year to keep them fresh.

Injuries, both minor and major, are unavoidable throughout the marathon that is a Major League Baseball season, so it was a very valid thought. Yet, through two weeks and so much scratching that Girardi’s lineup card might soon need some calamine lotion, it’s Jeter and A-Rod who are among the five Yankees to have appeared in all 12 games so far.

Life is weird sometimes, no?

Brett Gardner was scratched against the Angels Saturday due to flu-like symptoms, Mark Teixeira sat out Tuesday for the same reason (actually getting Jeter a “half-day off” as the DH as a result), and Wednesday saw Gardner once again

Think it’s crazy to ponder the thought of Derek Jeter reaching 4,000 hits in his career?

Maybe, given that it’s been less than a season since he even got to 3,000. And if you mentioned it to   Yankees manager Joe Girardi might agree with you.

“I think that’s kind of crazy to think about,” Girardi said prior to Monday’s game with the Twins. “You’re talking about five years of having to get 200 hits in a sense … I’m not ready to dive into that one yet.”

But all that said, it might not be as unachievable an accomplishment as you (or Girardi) might think.

Yes, he is far away. Through Monday’s game, Jeter had 3,105 career hits. So, even if he just maintained his career average of 192 per full season, he would,