Girardi's Inexplicable Lack of Trust in Gardner

For those of you not keeping score at home, the Yankees have faced two left-handed starters to-date – Jon Lester of the Boston Red Sox and David Price of the Tampa Bay Rays. Another similarity in those games lay in Brett Gardner’s presence on the bench, as opposed to the starting line-up. Girardi has garnered a reputation as a statistically savvy manager, paying close attention to platoon splits, individual match-ups, and even performance against certain pitch-types. With that in mind, it would seem prudent to give Girardi the benefit of the doubt – there must be a good reason to keep Gardner out of the line-up against lefties. However, I cannot help but dig a bit deeper…

Take a look at Gardner’s triple-slash line (AVG/OBP/SLG) against LHP:

• Minors - .292/.361/.406 (397 AB)
• 2008 – .125/.125/.125 (24 AB)
• 2009 – .291/.381/.400 (55 AB)

There are a few issues with these numbers, which I will address briefly. The minor league numbers don’t mean too much, as they’re minor league numbers, and the sample sizes of 2008 and 2009 are incredibly small. That being said, there isn’t much there that suggests that Gardner cannot hit lefties – with the exception of twenty-five at-bats in 2008, he hasn’t shown much of a platoon split. While the minor league numbers shouldn’t get too much weight, I do think that they should add a bit of credence for playing the ‘which one of these things is not like the others?’ game of Sesame Street fame.

With that in mind, we should also address the sentiment of the YES Network announcers. That is, that keeping Gardner out against left-handed pitchers will help his confidence… and that just doesn’t make any sense at all. I suppose it could hurt his confidence if he went 0-for-8 against Lester and Price – but is being benched and essentially told “we don’t trust you to do anything against a lefty” that much better?

It is true that Thames is fairly strong against lefties, sporting an OPS of .843 against southpaws. It would be unreasonable to expect that out of Gardner. However, I do think that Gardner can better Thames’ career .329 OBP against LHP, and even take a chunk out of Thames’ SLG advantage with his speed – particularly if he can maintain his excellent 85.4% success rate in stealing. Toss in the difference in fielding (Thames has a -12.2/UZR 150 compared to Gardner’s 28.8 mark – and even if you don’t like defensive metrics, I direct your attention to Thames lumbering around LF on Friday night), and I cannot help but think that there isn’t a single good reason for Thames to start.