With the recent reports that the Yankees are only willing to spend $2 million on a left fielder, Yankee fans are slowly coming to grips with the fact that Brett Gardner and his .352 career slugging may be our everyday player in left. Now that you’re done breathing into a paper bag, we can ask the question: Is this as bad as it seems?
Gardner’s offensive power is as ugly as it gets, but his slugging is artificially low relative to his actual offensive value because he’s an excellent base stealer. For his career he is 39 for 45 in steal attempts, or 87%, which is as close to automatic as you’ll get. If we add his 39 successful steals to his total bases and subtract his 6 failures, his slugging becomes .440 for his career. This approach ignores the jump from .299 to .379 his slugging took between 2008 and 2009. If he maintains his 2009 levels of production in 2010, then his slugging will be closer to .464 in 2010, if we count his steals among his total bases.
Gardner has also displayed an improved OBP between 2008 and 2009. He improved his performance to .345 in 2009, from .283 in 2008. During spring training 2009 Joe Girardi would rave about Gardner’s speed on the base path, which caused this Yankee fan to scream at the television since, you know, Gardner never got on base in 2008. In 2009 he improved dramatically, to the point that he only needs to maintain his ’09 pace this season to add value to the lineup.
Gardner is also a dramatic upgrade in left field from Johnny Damon. His 2009 UZR/150 was 15.4 in CF, which is fantastic. He started 15 games in LF in 2008, and posted a UZR/150 of 36.8, which is other-worldly. Compare this to Johnny Damon, who posted UZR/150′s of 11.6 and -12.1 in 2008 and 2009, respectively, in left. That’s an incredible decline.
According to Baseball Prospectus, Johnny Damon posted a VORP of 39.3 in 2009, while Gardner posted an 11.4. VORP is restricted to offense, and is adjusted for playing time. Damon made 626 plate appearances in 2009 versus Gardner’s 284. Let’s assume that Gardner doesn’t get injured in 2010, and makes twice as many plate appearances. This is fewer than Damon saw in 2009, but the team has indicated a willingness to platoon for Gardner. In that case, we can roughly double Gardner’s VORP to get a sense of his true value over the course of a season. He would be worth 22.8 runs.
UZR/150 tries to measure the number of runs a player saved (or would save) over 150 games at a given position in the field. If we take Damon’s actual VORP, or runs produced offensively in 2009, of 39.3 and add his UZR/150 of -12.1 we find that on both sides of the ball Damon was worth 27.2 runs in 2009. He put up great numbers on offense, and then gave some of that back on defense.
Turning our sites on Gardner’s assumed production for 2010, we begin with his estimated VORP of 22.8 and add his UZR/150 of 15.4. This brings us to 38.2 runs produced or saved, over about 150 games. Put another way, its easy to project a scenario in which Brett Gardner is BETTER than Johnny Damon next season, by 10 runs exactly.
This leans a bit more towards a “best case” than I would actually like. I am assuming that Gardner will not get hurt, will maintain his 2009 production levels, and won’t display volatility in the field, which is common when using UZR. That’s a lot of ifs for a young player. Johnny Damon provides a lot more data to work with. That said, the numbers don’t lie. Brett Gardner’s 2009 production on offense and defense over a full season was actually worth more than Johnny Damon’s.
I put together these estimates in about an hour, using a laptop and a calculator. My conclusion is similar to that of the entire New York Yankees organization. I like to imagine they spent more time and effort figuring out what to do with at least $2 million.
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6 Responses to Can Gardner make up for it in the field?
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TIQ IQ
I'm all for giving Gardner a chance. He provides a nice turn over for the bottom of the lineup and plays great defense. We all know that defense wins championships. His bat will come along, he's still young and as mentioned before his patience has greatly improved. His Strike out % dropped from 21% to 14% and his walk % increased from 5.7% to 9.2%.
He stole 3rd 5 times lst year and was successful 100% of the time, which is a great way to get in scoring position on a fly ball or infield ground ball if he know. His Extra Bases Taken % is 48% compared to the league average of 39%
Defensively in a small sample size from LF he had a held % of 85.7% where the average that year was 62.7%. He gets to the ball quickly and has a surprisingly good arm.
Worst comes to worst we'll see the Yanks make a move mid season but I expect good things out of gardner in 2010. We can't have an all star at every position as nice as that sounds.
Just read this on the John…good stuff. Also, I had no idea you could just do this: UZR/150 + VORP = Total Run contribution.
That post was one of the best ones yet in taking the sabermetric stuff and dumbing it down for someone (like me) who doesn't fully understand all of them.
Well done Mike
The variable I see with Gardner is whether or not he can maintain the production for the whole season, but he has every motivation in the world. I actually began noticing last year that, despite his lack of power, Gardner was actually a better offensive player than Melky, if his steals were taken into account.
oh boy… I usually agree with most of the stuff written here, but this one stopped me in my tracks. Jonny Damon is a borderline hall of famer who opposing pitchers did not want to face because he approached every at-bat as a professional. That means taking pitches, directional hitting, moving runners over, etc. Moreover, Damon has done this consistently throughout his career. I think if you poled 100 major leaguer pitchers, all 100 major league pitchers would say they don't even know who Brett Gardner is… here is a perfect example of skewing the stats to make them say what you want them to… you just have to believe your eyes here. Gardner shouldn't be allowed to be mentioned in the same sentence as Damon just yet, unless its Gardner is coming off the bench to relieve him.
The bulk of Gardner's potential value over Damon comes from the boost in defense. Damon is, hands down, a better hitter. But if the defensive metrics are true then there is evidence to argue that Gardner may make up for it in the field. RAB had a similar post showing that the defense of Jose Molina may have made up his lack of offense and then some when Jorge was out.
"Gardner is also a dramatic upgrade in left field from Johnny Damon. His 2009 UZR/150 was 15.4 in CF, which is fantastic. He started 15 games in LF in 2008, and posted a UZR/150 of 36.8, which is other-worldly. Compare this to Johnny Damon, who posted UZR/150's of 11.6 and -12.1 in 2008 and 2009, respectively, in left. That's an incredible decline."
And this is why you don't compare UZR/150 on a year-to-year basis. Please refer to Moshe Mandel's point.
http://www.theyankeeu.com/2010/01/being-smart-on-uzr-14037