Is Brett Gardner, dare I say it, for real? All offseason long Brett Gardner was viewed as the weak link in the Yankee lineup (tough to imagine now) and it was a huge debate if the Yankees needed to upgrade. Was he holding the spot warm for Carl Crawford as his shift to LF may have suggested? Would they be bringing in a LF at the deadline once he failed? Could he approximate a league average or slightly below bat and bring value because of his defense. There were a lot of people on both sides of the coin, often to the extreme. There were those who said he was at best a 5^th outfielder, and there were those who said he could have a .400+ OBP. I did my best to stay away from the extremes, but I did believe that Gardner could become a starting caliber player, though at CF to take advantage of his stellar defense. So far, he has been more than that, what are the chances that it lasts?

For the past few years when following Brett Gardner through the minors and his early stints in the majors, we’ve often heard that Gardner always struggles to adjust when he moves up a level but eventually settles in. As you can see below, the numbers bear this out. Gardner has at AA, AAA, and MLB really improved as he gets more settled into the league and increased competition. While there are SSS issues with some of the numbers, you can see that while his BABIP improved each time, the improvement wasn’t drastic, so therefore he wasn’t overly lucky in his improvements until this year. His increased in production for this year can likely be contributed to his big increase in BABIP, so he likely has some regression in store going forward. The key will be where his BABIP settles in. He was at .355 in the minors, which is likely unsustainable at the Major League level. Can he settle in around .330?

Assuming the same number of walks, with a .328 BABIP Gardner would have a double slash line of .293/.373. At .303 BABIP he would be at .271/.354. Even with the low BABIP at the .271/.354 line, with stellar defense in CF he’s a valuable player. Obviously that carries less value in LF, but that’s essentially a game of semantics. He is likely their best defensive CF, but is penciled in to LF due to uncertainty around his performance, and some deferral to a more established player. One of the main issues of course with this is that most of Gardner’s numbers have come against RHP. One of the small silver linings of all the recent injuries is that Gardner gets a chance to prove he can hit LHP, or that he can’t. If he can and can put up the, at a minimum .271/.354 line (with a paltry slugging percentage), I’m pretty comfortable with him in CF and shifting Grandy to LF starting next year.

With regards to the balls he’s hitting, Gardner’s ground ball and fly ball percentages are pretty much in line with his minor league career totals (including his poor 1^st seasons).  He is hitting more line drives and less infield popups.  If that’s due to being more comfortable, better pitch selection, and improvements to his approach and swing, keeping his line drive % up could go a long way toward legitimizing him as a full time player.  Also, while I looked below at Gardner’s career MiLB LD%, it looks as if he did make a significant adjustment in his swing while in the minors.  In 2005 and 2006 his LD% were 8.7 and 11.5%.  In 2007 and 2008 they were 15.1% and 16.2%.  That’s a major shift, and makes me believe his current MLB LD% is more sustainable.

In a deferential nod to “old school baseball” I’m going to put aside stats for my closing. In just watching Gardner this year as opposed to last, he simply looks better at the plate, doesn’t he? He looks more comfortable, and doesn’t look overmatched at the plate like he did at times in 2008 and 2009. In that past he would sometimes looking like a boy against men and pitchers approached him as such.  This is no longer the case.  Like a blind man at an orgy, Gardner seems to have been feeling his way around, and now he’s fully settled in.

Yankee outfielder Brett Gardner arrived at Spring Training in the best shape of his career, at least according to him. “Man, I look good, I feel good, my heart is now 50x stronger than it had been last year, so I’m expecting big things for 2010,” said the speedy South Carolinian, the only Yankee possessing [...]