Derek Jeter is now hitting .290. 

A red-hot Jeter is closing in on .300 for the season and has quietly moved into the Top 25 in the league in hitting (Getty Images).

Yes, really. The same hitter who could barely lift the ball off the ground through the first three months of this season is now among baseball's hottest hitters. 

Wednesday, Jeter had his fifth game of the season in which he's had at least four hits. That matches the most four-hit games he's ever had in a season, done during his prime years of 1998 and 2000. 

What has led to this rejuvenation? 

Others in the Yankees blogosphere have looked into this in a couple of different ways over the last 24 hours. We'll add a few numbers to their measures.

Jeter is hitting left-handers like almost nobody else. He's 21-for-43 with five doubles and two home runs against lefties since his return from injury. That's raised his batting average against lefties from .299 to .373, third-best in the majors, trailing two pretty good hitters -- Dustin Pedroia and Joey Votto. 

Jeter has been able to catch up to faster pitches. He has as many hits in 30 at-bats against pitches of 93 mph or more (11) since coming off the disabled list as he did prior to going on it (he had 11 in 60 at-bats ending in such pitches).

He's also been able to handle his biggest bugaboo -- the changeup -- better than he had previously. In the first two-and-a-half months, Jeter made 22 outs when an at-bat ended with a changeup and had just one hit. In the last six weeks, he's made 21 outs against changeups, but he has five hits.            

Jeter has been able to do some things with pitches in odd spots. He has more hits in the last six weeks on pitches out of the strike zone (9) than he had on those same pitches over the first two-and-a-half months of the season (8). 

As noted in the two pieces we linked to, Jeter is hitting ropes, regardless of whether he's facing a righty or lefty, a hard-thrower or soft-tosser. Since returning, more than one-quarter (26.6 percent) of his balls in play have been line drives, a rate double what he was able to do prior to getting hurt. 

Jeter's also been able to pull the ball at a rate far better than usual -- more than one-third of his hits (35 percent) during this run have been instances in which he's pulled the ball. Prior that, his rate of pulled base hits was 22 percent. 

So in other words, it's a little bit of everything that has turned Jeter into the offensive machine that's more resembling the Jeter of years past. And the player known as Captain Clutch has returned: Jeter was a .179 hitter with runners in scoring position prior to going on the DL. Since then he's at .341. 

Let's say Jeter finished the season with 575 at-bats (he's at 411 now, so that's a realistic number). If so, he'd need to hit .329 the rest of the way to reach the .300 mark. 

That won't be easy. Consider this: If Jeter matches the hot streak he's been on since coming off the DL, he'd finish just over that mark, at .304. So there's room for a drop-off, but a very slight one. 

The hardest things for Jeter to sustain will be his batting average on the fly balls he hits within the field of play (ie: those that aren't home runs) and that prodigious line drive rate. 

During this streak, when Jeter hits a fly ball that stays in the park, he's 7-for-15. That's unusual not just for most major leaguers, but for Jeter as well. Statistically speaking, if Jeter hits 15 fly balls that stay in the park, he'll typically get three hits, maybe four. Seven is a bit high. A return to his pre-established norms over his next 15 fly balls would cost him three to four hits. When chasing .300 at season's end, three to four hits is significant. 

The other thing to keep in mind is that a line drive rate of nearly 27 percent is VERY hard to maintain. Over the last four seasons, according to the data on Fangraphs.com, Jeter has had a line drive rate ranging from 16 to 20 percent. 

A reduction in his line drive rate, even if Jeter were to get hits on 70 to 75 percent of those (since his return, he's 22-for-34 when hitting a line drive), would also likely knock him down a peg or two. To get to .300, Jeter is going to have to keep this up, or something very similar to it, for another six weeks. Statistically unlikely? Yes. 

But we've seen extraordinary from Jeter before. What's to say he doesn't have another 41 games of greatness in him?

ORIGINAL STORY
http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/yankees/post/_/id/21960/jeters-sizzling-is-300-doable