Brett Gardner’s quietly great year is a harbinger of things to come

Brett Gardner: Little guy, big player, the American League Player of the Week. He’s officially 5’10. I went to interview him when he was at Double-A Trenton in 2006, and perhaps this is the exaggeration of memory, but I’m only 6’1, probably less than that after years spent bent over a keyboard, and my memory is that I towered over him to the point that I could see the top of his shaved head. I was initially taken aback -- I knew baseball wasn’t looking for another Brett Butler at that time, not when even utility players were slugging .450, and as good as the kid’s minor league performances were, he had hit zero home runs that year. In total, he hit nine home runs in a minor-league career of nearly 400 games.

That’s right -- having hit six home runs in his last 51 plate appearances (and five in his last 32), Gardner has chewed up two-thirds of his minor league home-run total in a fraction of the time. We improve, we grow in ability if not in stature (we hope). As players such as Dustin Pedroia, Adam Eaton, and Jose Altuve and their many historical precedents demonstrate, height need not be an impediment to major league success. Although Gardner has not been consistent at the plate, on the bases, or in terms of his own constitution, and had to overcome the Yankees’ preference to play another team’s superannuated veteran over their own vital youngster, he established himself as a top-flight player. With last week’s power surge, he’s on his way to his fourth season of being worth four-plus wins above replacement.

Last winter, as the Yankees went on a Hail Mary spending spree, they paused to sign Gardner, who at 30 is roughly, and somewhat incredibly, tied with Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury, and the late-arriving Chase Headley and Martin Prado for the title of youngest player on team, to a four-year contract extension. So far this has proved to be their best investment of the offseason among position players (leaving aside the wounded Masahiro Tanaka on the pitching side). All season long, this has provoked a fascinating question that goes something like this:

1. Brett Gardner is the best position player on the Yankees.

2. Can a team that has Brett Gardner as its best position player compete for a pennant?

Until Gardner started doing his Babe Ruth imitation in Texas, the answer to that seemed to be “no.” Even with Gardner suddenly (and likely transiently) driving the ball over the wall, the answer is still probably no. Despite the five home runs in six games, the Yankees only went 3-3.

Still, the arrival of Gardner among the upper echelon of players (he is presently tied for 13th in OPS+ among qualified AL hitters), should he maintain that standing, speaks well for the future of offense in the game. That’s true whether he maintains his newfound power or not. In a world of declining offensive levels, one increasingly dominated by the shift (and pundits who wring their hands over it), the near-term future of the game belongs to the Brett Gardners of the world, players who are patient, who hit the ball to all fields and thus are hard to defend against, who can beat out a grounder, who steal a base, and yes, who surprise with the occasional home run. We’re not going back to the Deadball era, but defense has evolved to the point that what is needed to restore the offensive balance is offensive versatility. When the all-fields hitters have enjoyed a thorough revival, like small mammals replacing the dinosaurs, the world will be safe for pull-hitters again. It’s the baseball circle of life.

We could beat the analogy to death by saying the returning pull hitters would be the equivalent of mammalian megafauna and the return of the shift would be the clovis points, but it’s too depressing, especially since one of the best of our remaining megafauna, the elephants, are about to vanish for all time. In any case, the shift will never go away completely; it has existed at least since the days of Ted Williams, if not earlier, and its newfound prevalence represents technological advancement in that now every ball in play can be identified by trajectory and assigned to a hitter.

To continue the evolutionary motif for a moment, a look at the stats reveals the empty ecological niche. In 1988, the first year for which Baseball-Reference has stats on hit trajectory, Wade Boggs had 80 hits to the opposite field , setting a standard for left-handed hitters no one has come close to matching since. The top 10 for the ensuing years is dominated by Boggs (three appearances) and Brett Butler (two). It has been 12 years since a lefty had as many as 60 opposite-field hits in a season (Ichiro, 2002).

The right-handed side of the opposite field group will soon be dominated by players who are either retired (and, in one case, deceased) or are about to be: Derek Jeter has four of the top 10 spots, Kirby Puckett two others, and the remainder belong to current hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, Michael Young, Miguel Tejada, and one active player, Matt Holliday, though Cardinals fans might dispute just how active he really is.

Last year, no player had as many as 50 opposite-field hits regardless of the side of plate from which he swung.

Gardner, not truly a high-average hitter, hits to all fields, and has found increased success the last two years by hitting more line drives and fewer grounders. Despite the traditional emphasis on speedsters hitting down on the ball, it’s a tough way for a hitter to make a living. Since 1988, there have been 229 season in which a batter with 200 or more plate appearances has hit .200 or less on grounders, whereas there have been only 128 seasons in which batters hit .300 or better. Still, the little guy will do for now as an exemplar of the kind of player who can restore batting averages by making the shift a losing proposition.

It might not be Gardner who sees us to the promised land. Between injuries and the Yankees being the Yankees, he didn’t have his first season as a major league regular until he was 26, so although speedy players age more slowly than their more sluggish brethren, this peak will probably not last long.

So much of success in baseball is about thwarting expectations. The pitcher who falls into a predictable pattern will get hit, and if he goes to his best pitch too often, batters will wait on it and turn it into his worst pitch. The same goes for hitters whose swings are too limited. There is a great old baseball story about a player Branch Rickey sold to the Dodgers, Tom Winsett. Winsett killed the ball in the minor leagues and in major league batting practice, and Rickey was asked how he could part with such a promising prospect. The Mahatma only laughed. “Mr. Winsett sweeps that bat in the same plane every time, no matter where the ball is pitched! Woe unto the pitcher who throws the ball where the Winsett bat is functioning, but throwing it almost anywhere else in the general area of home plate is safe!”

Right now, baseball is functioning from a surfeit of Winsettism. It needs more Gardnerism, more Boggsism, more BrettButlerism, and then offense will rebound. Gardner is having a quietly excellent year. More of this, please, and we can stop hearing about the new 1968 and the need to outlaw the shift -- and it will be a better game too.