Finding a Middle Ground, Part One

[image title="Brett Gardner 1" size="full" id="14140" align="center" linkto="full" ]
In this dull time of the offseason, when non-roster invitees and minor league deals, are the only things keeping the Hot Stove warm, there’s really not much to analyze. However, in the very bottom of the barrel–well, maybe not the very bottom, but rather the side–we have the projections.

I’ve referenced a lot of them before–CHONE and CAIRO mostly–and today, the Marcel’s projections came out on FanGraphs. They are available on the player pages, as the article says, and they join the FanGraphs fan projections, the Bill James projections, and the aforementioned CHONE projections. In this post, I’m going to average out the different projections for a few different players, and see what we could reasonably expect.

There are certain guys–Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira, for example–that will put up great numbers no matter what the projections say. There are others, though, that could be curious cases. The first is Brett Gardner. He’s been one of the most talked about Yankees of this offseason, and he’s become boderline controversial. Let’s see what the average projection give us for Brett.

The average triple slash for Gardner is .272/.351/.379 (346 PAs) with 30 steals compared to six times being caught. If someone could magically guarantee that line for Gardner, batting in the nine spot, I’d take it literally every single time it was offered, especially if Gardner kept playing strong defense.

What’s interesting about these numbers, particularly the steals, is that they’re projected in a relatively small amount of playing time. The most plate appearances projected for Gardner is 428 (by the fans). If Gardner’s going to be the full time left fielder, he’ll obviously get a lot more trips to the plate than that. Let’s go bullish here, and assume Gardner is in fact the full time LF, and doesn’t have a platoon partner. Last year, Yankee nine hole hitters got 643 plate appearances.

With a .351 OBP in 346s PAs, Gardner would be on base about 122 times. With his projected 30 steals, that’s a steal every 4.1 times on base. Assuming a .351 OBP in 643 PAs, that’s 226 times on base. If we also give Gardner a steal every 4.1 times on base, that’s 55 steals to 10 CS (about 83%).

It is more than a tad bit optimistic to assume Gardner will stick for over 600 PAs in the majors in 2010 (I highly doubt that happens). However, if he does, and lives up to these projections, he could be very valuable for the Yankees. After all, nine hitters who get on at a .351 clip and can steal 55 bases–while playing great defense–don’t grow on trees. Factor in his salary and Gardner could be a big steal (get it?) for the Bombers in 2010. Tune in tomorrow when I run this same examination for another Yankee with question marks.

Follow Me On Twitter