More on Brett Gardner v. Melky

While I may have mentioned in hyperbole in a previous post that after 10 games it was clear that Brett Gardner was not the CF for the New York Yankees, I was not basing my entire statement on solely the 2009 season thus far. Let's not forget that Gardner had nearly 150 at bats last season and posted a putrid OPS of .582 (OPS+ of 53). Combine that with 11 games from this season and Gardner has appeared in 53 major league games and 183 at bats with a career OPS of .596 and an OPS+ of 56. Melky's career OPS/OPS+ are .705 and 84, respectively. If you are willing to toss out Melky's crappy season of last year, those numbers balloon to jump to .728 and 90.

I know that the doubters will certainly point to 183 at bats as too small a sample size to judge him. So let's placate these Gardner fans and take a peak at his minor league stats, shall we? I dare somebody to point to something in those statistics that lead you to believe that Brett Gardner can help the team more than Melky Cabrera. He had a career minor league slugging percentage below his OBP. He walked a lot in the minors, you may argue? He still struck out more than he walked, and bad a BB/K ratio of .803. Compare that to Melky's .686 BB/K ration in the MAJOR LEAGUES, and that seems to be a wash as well.

Brett Gardner is young and still learning the game? Brett Gardner was born August 24, 1983; Melky Cabrera was born August 11, 1984. The Melk Man is almost a full year YOUNGER than Gardner.

The Melk Man is off to a hot start this season, is simply straight up better than Brett Gardner at the plate, and has the vastly superior throwing arm (he has 35 career assists). Why would they start Brett Gardner in CF again?

Also, I would just like to reiterate that I do not necessarily think Joe Girardi should be fired, I just purchased the domain name because I couldn't believe it was available. I'm willing to give Girardi the benefit of the doubt, for now.