Adrian Beltre (USA TODAY Sports Images)

The headline on this post will seem as obvious to some as it does obtuse to others. And if we’re being fair, there are a lot of ways to assess a career, and Derek Jeter’s ranks among the best of all time by many of them: Championship rings won, praise garnered, re2pect earned, checks cashed, etc.

But if we’re talking about plain, old, regular-season value to their teams, 35-year-old Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre has arguably already done more to help his clubs win games than Jeter did in his entire career. By baseball-reference’s version of WAR, Beltre outranks Jeter by six full wins. Jeter’s got an edge — ha! — in Fangraphs’ version of the same stat, but Beltre should make up the difference pretty easily within the next two seasons if he only stays healthy. Texas picked up Beltre’s 2016 contract option this week.

Beltre has been about as good a hitter as Jeter was across his career, though Jeter got on base more and Beltre has a bit more power. And while Jeter played the more premium defensive position, Beltre has been, by almost all accounts, such a phenomenally good defensive third baseman than he mitigates the Truest Yankee’s positional advantage.

None of that means to knock Jeter in any way, just to draw a comparison between a universally beloved, no-doubt first-ballot Hall of Famer and a dude best recognized as the guy who flips out when anyone touches his head. (Though if we’re being fair, it’s completely hilarious. Beltre seems like a delightfully weird dude.)

Heck, by the counting stats alone, Beltre looks like he’ll end up a pretty obvious Hall of Famer. He has hit so well and stayed so healthy into his mid-30s — average 155 games and hitting .320 over the past three seasons — that it seems likely he’ll blow past 3,000 hits before he’s finished. And with 395 home runs under his belt, Beltre’s got an outside chance at joining the 500-homer club.

And Beltre has also been perhaps the best defensive player of his generation, with sure hands and range for days. The best defensive stats are far from perfect, and new technologies should soon help us assess fielders in more accurate ways. But UZR — ultimate zone rating — is about the best publicly available metric that currently exists, and Beltre has been the career leader in the stat since Fangraphs started tracking it in 2002. If you’re skeptical about its merit, consider the defensive abilities and reputations of the next five guys on the list: Yadier Molina, J.J. Hardy, Jimmy Rollins, Andruw Jones and Scott Rolen.

Beltre joined the Majors at an extremely young age and was just kind of an average player for his first few years in the big leagues, hardly an overnight success. Plus he struggled offensively through parts of a long free-agent deal he signed with the Mariners before the 2005 season. And he has played for four different teams and never won a World Series. There are plenty of understandable reasons that his is not a household name.

But Beltre, at 35 and under contract for the next two seasons, and coming off five of the six best seasons of his Major League career, now stands among the Top 5 active players in hits, home runs, total bases, RBI, and WAR. He’s already likely heading to the Hall of Fame, but he certainly deserves more credit. Maybe even a congratulatory pat on the head.

(GIF via Giphy.com)