The Dord of Darien

Musings from the Mayor of the Internet

Sounds like a plan!

Brett Gardner’s goals in this year’s spring training? To be less selective at the plate and bunt more.

Brett’s pretty fast, and if he learns to bunt for a hit reliably, that’s valuable, but I don’t think anybody’s ever done that. So probably we’re talking about boring, team-hurting sacrifice bunts. So stop doing that.

It’s actually the other goal that’s more interesting to me, though. Gardner thinks he struck out too often last year, and needs to swing more often. To this I say: huh.

Now, don’t get me wrong; if Brett Gardner starts making fewer outs, that will only help. But his 2010 OBP was .383, which ain’t too shabby, and he doesn’t swing near as often as he should — 2010 Z-swing% of only 44.7%, which is really really low compared to the league average of 64.4%. So swinging more should be good, right?

Well… not necessarily. If he just converts a bunch of looking strikeouts to swinging strikeouts or like infield pop-ups, that’s not a win. And a lot of Gardner’s value is predicated on his very good O-swing% of 18.2% and thus the fact that he walked 79 times; if he starts swinging at more bad pitches and converts a bunch of those walks to outs, he ain’t helpin’ nobody. Well, except Boston and Tampa.

The reason this seems weird to me is that 2010 Brett Gardner is in the select club of players with OBP higher than SLG — .383 to .379. If I were Brett Gardner (and you know I am), perhaps I’d consider hitting a double now and then and not focus on risky ways to improve my already-very-good OBP.

The thing about that article that’s less interesting is that Joe (Yankees!) Girardi might have Derek (Yankees!!) Jeter hit second instead of first. Their OBPs are the same and Jeter slugs a hundred points higher. Clearly Gardner – Jeter is the right choice. But still — it seems like it was only yesterday that I was reading a boneheaded article about how Derek Jeter doesn’t get enough attention, and now today here’s this one breathlessly angst-ing about a totally routine lineup change just because his name’s in it.

And here’s Stats Inc. being complete morons:

Mar 13 Jeter was charged with an error Sunday when he misplayed a pop fly in the fourth Sunday against Minnesota.

Advice: The fielding miscue was surprising since Jeter is a reigning Gold Glove winner

Go to hell, Stats Inc.


March 17th, 2011 Posted by | Baseball | no comments

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