Dunkirk NY – I’ve never been a Brett Gardner fan. That’s mostly because of his overall demeanor. I’ve never seen a player work so hard to be mediocre. His vaunted intensity and approach to the game has always garnered a certain attention, as has his “veteran presence.” I much prefer the intensity of a player like D.J. LeMahieu.
If you look at Gardner’s stats, you’ll see he’s been throughout his career the very definition of an average player. His wRC+ is a mere 103 (majors and minors combined; average is 100), while his wOBA is .327 (average is .320). He has a terrible arm for an outfielder, neither strong nor accurate. His biggest asset on the field has always been his speed, but since 2011, when he stole 49 bases, he hasn’t reached 25 SB since.
I’ve always felt his intensity is a put-on, something he does to make his mediocrity look better. It’s never been quite on display as during this year’s incidents of smashing the dugout ceiling with his bat on calls with which he did not agree. He claimed he wasn’t trying to show up the umpires, attributing it rather to how much he gets emotionally involved in the game. But of course he was trying to show up the umps in a middle-school sort of way. I thought it was rather tawdry. It only reinforced my general dislike for him.
During a recent Yankees game, though, I heard Michael Kay make an interesting observation. To paraphrase Kay, Gardner “does not worry about his brand, doesn’t seek endorsements, doesn’t have a presence on social media. He’s a lunch-pail ballplayer, and all he cares about is coming to the ballpark, playing the game, and winning.”
I was taken aback a bit when I realized how true that was. I can’t remember him in any commercial, or seeing a tweet, or thinking about his image. All he does is play ball. He’s a master of the post-game interview; never refusing one, and never saying anything while doing one. I’ve no idea what he does as a charity, so it must be pretty low-key. This, I like. It made me look at him in a slightly different light. I don’t think he’s any better of a ballplayer for it, but perhaps his intense image is not so fake after all. He keeps it simple and under the radar. When he’s playing bad, he seems no worse than when he’s playing well; you can’t tell the difference. And this year, he has not had his usual late-season swoon, with 25 HRs as of this writing. He’s a player from the past, sure and steady in his own average way.
So, maybe Gardner doesn’t suck so much after all. You can do a lot worse in this world than giving people exactly what they need on a consistent basis, and perhaps just a touch more, with little fuss or fanfare. Enough is, in players such as Gardner, enough. -tw;