The Magic Gardner
Posted by Steve L. on June 21st, 2011 · Comments (20)
It’s nice to day hello…
Via Chad Jennings -
Take away his first 18 games this season, and Brett Gardner is a .356/.438/.521 hitter. That’s since April 26, a fairly significant sample size of 52 games and 146 at-bats. In the past 11 games, Gardner has hit a Major League-best .472, and since June 7 he has more walks than strikeouts and an on-base percentage well above .500.
Next to Nancy Newman’s perky blouse brothers, Brett Gardner just may be the best home-grown “ain’t nothing wrong with” thing in Yankeeland these days.
Didja know Carole and Paula are still performing?
Good – Trade him. He is the most over rated player on this team since Bernie. He has no arm and cannot get his base stealing going.
Bernie overrated? That’s a new one… Switch hitting CF with power? That’s not common.
K-V-C wrote:
Except for one thing: he’s not overrated at all. He happens to be 2nd among regular major league left fielders in WAR (both fWAR and bWAR), 10th among all regular major league outfielders in WAR, and 21st among all major league regular position players at any position in WAR. Both BIS’ +/- defensive runs saved and UZR say he’s saved the Yanks 13 runs (defensively) so far this season vs. the average ML left fielder.
And he’s cheap as hell. And the Yanks have no one to replace him right now. But other than those, your “trade him” plan has no flaws that I can see.
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Bernie was overrated? Really?
Well, maybe from 2003 until he retired. But from 1994-2002 he was a terrific player, and as he probably was not a PED user (I infer this from the fact that his growth and aging patterns are typical for players who did not use them), his stats would look even better if his competition had been as honest as he apparently was.
Bernie’s stats from 1994-2002, prorated for 150 games per “season”:
577 AB, 110 R, 184 H, 35 2B, 5 3B, 25 HR, 104 RBI, .319/.404/.525/.929, 84 BB, 87 K, and he averaged 5 WAR a year for nearly a decade.
That’s a pretty damn good ballplayer, and, as far as know, although he was very popular with the fans, nobody ever called him a superstar. He’s a marginal Hall of Fame candidate (probably won’t get in). By similarity scores, the most similar player to Bernie is Bobby Abreu. The 2nd most similar is…
…Paul O’Neill.
@ K-V-C:
Based on Gardner’s productivity and price, it would be ridiculous for the Yanks to trade him. But I agree, he does need to seriously work on his base stealing. His good OBP means nothing if he continues to erase himself from the base paths.
LMJ229 wrote:
It doesn’t really mean “nothing”. Bad baserunning detracts from his offensive value, but it doesn’t eliminate it.
@ K-V-C:
Really? Is Carl Crawford worth $17 million/yr more? BG seems to be in a base stealing slump. His leads are good but his breaks are poor. Not sure the Yankees have a real base stealing coach in the org. Time to get one and not squander Gardy’s skill. He should be good for 40 to 50 steals a year at an 80%+ clip. Fastest guy we’ve had since Mickey Rivers.
Yes Bernie was over rated. war-fwar-bwar whatever – he was a one tool player, granted he was a great hitter, but that was it. Little girl arm, couldn’t run the bases(no baseball instincts) and horrible outfielder.
Garnder, for his 4 years, 370 games, has stolen 100 bases and been caught 25 times. Last year was great 47 steals caught 9 times, this year he is 14 steal caught 10 times…so what happened? Has he lost a step already? (Does he really need a base stealing coach?)
His career B.A is .272 with 12 home runs, so yes I would trade him while he is hot.
Price?? Since when does Price matter to the Yankees? You have Andruw Jones making $2 million to sit on the bench while Gardner is making $530,000
@ K-V-C:
Perhaps you were spoiled by Griffey? What CF was better than Bernie?
Keep in mind that I’m trying my best not to let the fact that Bernie is my all time favorite player get in the way of my argument here.
Corey Italiano wrote:
Should read, what non-Griffey CF was better than Bern baby Bern?
#15 wrote:
I’m not sure either but they should really consider bringing in a guy like Ricky Henderson, at least on a short-term basis, to coach these guys up. I think Ricky did it with the Mets last year. The Yanks have some guys with speed – we need to do our best to capitalize on that.
OK, I have now seen enough of Ramiro Pena! Does anyone know the status of Chavez? He can’t come back soon enough IMO.
Evan3457 wrote:
Agreed but I was thinking more in terms of scoring runs as opposed to his stats.
Corey Italiano wrote:
There wasn’t any. Switch hitting CF’s with power aren’t all that common. Remember, Bernie batted cleanup on a championship team, nothing to sneeze at. If anything, Bernie was underrated.
LMJ229 wrote:
I think he recently graduated to doing treadmill work.
“Bernie overrated”, really? seriously? Whatevs!
@ Raf:
I’m completely on your side, Bernie is hands down my favorite player.
K-V-C wrote:
Bernie did not get good jumps on balls hit directly at him, but early in his career he was able to outrun most of his mistakes. His arm was also good very early in his career, but his throwing should went on him when he was relatively young.
You pooh-pooh Bernie as a one-dimensional ballplayer, but in fact:
1) His offense was three-dimensional. In his peak seasons, he hit for high average, he hit for good power, and he drew a goodly number of walks.
2) That one-dimension is important enough to outweigh the other three you named: fielding, throwing and base-running.
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Did a search on BRef. Criteria were seasons with at least a .300 BAVG, at least 20 HR, at least 100 RBI, at least 70 BB, and at least 90% of the player’s games played in CF, from 1901 through 2011.
1 season: Robin Yount, Dale Murphy, Freddy Lynn and Larry Doby
2 seasons: Joe DiMaggio, Earl Averill and Jim Edmonds
3 seasons: Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey, Jr.
4 seasons: Willie Mays, Hack Wilson and…Bernie Williams
No CF had more than 4 such seasons in the last 110 years.
Does this prove Bernie was better than Joe D or Mickey? No. Mickey didn’t have many seasons with 100 RBI and a .300 BAVG; Joe D didn’t have many in which he walked at least 70 times.
Just trying to show that Bernie offensive game was very well-rounded through his prime 9 seasons.
@ Evan3457:
Your making my point for me – He was a great hitter, period.
His offense would in fact outweigh the rest of his game if he was a DH, he wasn’t. This is the main point of my argument…Most Yankee fans are like you, they will overlook his entire game, and focus on his great hitting. I’m not belittling Bernie, I just think he was over rated.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. (I saw his entire major league career and I really don’t remember him ever having anything other than a little girls arm.)
@ K-V-C:
You still didn’t mention the non-Griffey CF you would have taken over him during his time.