Brett Gardner: Buy Low Candidate
Of all the factors that go into making a successful fantasy trade, timing may be the most important. We’ve reached that point in the season where owners have experienced a month’s worth of data from their draft picks. Though we know a month’s worth of stats shouldn’t alter our expectations, it’s hard not to be frustrated with slow starters. This is where you might be able to take advantage of another owner in a trade. If you aren’t currently scouring your fantasy leagues, looking for undervalued trade-targets, you better start now. Until then, I’m here to help. Today, we’ll look at Brett Gardner as a player you should be targeting.
As a follow up to his 2010 breakout, Brett Gardner has been a major disappointment thus far. The aspects that made him so valuable last season (speed and the ability to get on base) haven’t manifested themselves this season. Since Gardner is a slap-hitter that relies on speed, his BABIP is always going to have a big influence on his numbers. So it’s promising, then, that Gardner’s current .261 BABIP is much lower than his career average of .320.
While we shouldn’t expect Gardner’s BABIP to rebound to last year’s mark, Gardner should start getting help from the luck dragons soon. Despite the bad luck, Gardner has continued walking at a strong pace. Once his BABIP stabilizes, Gardner should see his on-base percentage rebound as well.
There are some significant reasons to be concerned about Gardner, however. His strikeout rate has soared to 31.0% this season. If he keeps striking out at that rate, it’s going to be difficult to raise his average. Gardner has also experienced terrible luck on bunt hits this season. After successfully bunting for a hit 36.8% of the time last season, Gardner hasn’t managed a single bunt hit in 2011. (As Joe Pawlikowski might tell you, Gardner would probably be more successful if he didn’t try and bunt once a game.) Gardner has the speed to beat out some of these attempts, but the league has likely also adjusted to his style- so while we should expect improvement, we shouldn’t expect a full rebound.
If you want to try and buy low on Gardner, you might want to strike quickly. As Buster Olney noted on Twitter earlier today, Gardner has been heating up lately. Over his last five games, Gardner has managed eight walks and five hits. That’s an incredibly tiny sample, but it’s also not a long enough period of success for Gardner’s owner to take notice. If Gardner manages to rip off a run of ten games like this, you could miss out on your window of opportunity.
Trading for a player like Gardner is always a risky proposition. He doesn’t have an established record of success in the big leagues, and his success depends on how much luck he receives on balls in play. At the same time, we’re at the point in the fantasy season where strong talent can be acquired for peanuts. Even if Gardner doesn’t experience a full rebound, he still has a lot of value. Not only is Gardner one of the elite stolen base producers, but he’s in a stacked lineup with no threat of losing his job. The fact that he’s going to continue to receive playing time means that he’s going to improve as the season progresses. The window to acquire Gardner is small, so you are going to want to strike now.
Chris is a blogger for CBSSports.com. He has also contributed to Sports on Earth, the 2013 Hard Ball Times Baseball Annual, ESPN, FanGraphs and RotoGraphs. He tries to be funny on twitter @Chris_Cwik.
While he has no threat to lose his job outright, he has been platooned for the most part with Andruw Jones.
Brett Gardner is terrible. He had a great first half last year, an abysmal second half, and is now having an even worse start to 2011. Not sure why there is so much love for him. He has no power and is never going to hit above .250.
brett gardner got hit on the wrist in the 2nd half of last season which he had to have surgery on in the off season, thats why his numbers declined.
He injured his wrist, can’t imagine why he would have had a worse second half last year…
Gardner has never batted below .280 in a full year of work.
Not sure why there is so much hate for… oh wait… he wears a Yankee jersey doesn’t he…
I think that will likely change soon, Bobby, especially if Gardner continues to play the way he’s been the past few games.
Gardner was a buy-low candidate before the last week of solid production. I can guarantee you one owner who noticed – the guy who owns Gardner.
This isn’t how buy-lows work – you can’t wait for the stock to rally, and then jump in with a “buy low!” call. You have to make the call while the player is still slumping, when confidence is shaken.
Maybe you can still get a reasonable price on Gardner, but I know the people in my leagues, their feeling will be “Okay, Gardner is coming around.”
Or maybe they’re saying, “He had a couple of good games maybe I can dump him.” That’s what I’m trying to do with Chone Figgins.
Except Chone Figgins had a terrible 2010 too…
Terrible… yet he still stole 40 bases. Dump him now in roto… I dare you!
Wouldn’t Raji Davis be a better Buy Low at this point?
How is he a buy low? He’s just back from the DL and stole how many bases?
I’d love to have him on my teams, knowing that the Blue Jays are going to be running like they are.
luck dragons?? are you f–king kidding me? His timing was completely off and he was positioned too far off the plate. In the last 10 days or so, they moved him closer to the plate so he has made better contact and he is now able to foul off the pitch away, which he was getting raped by early on. The constant resorting to “luck” as a way to make up for the fact that you guys fulfill the SABRstereotype by *not watching the games* disgusts me.
Neither is the constant need to find an explanation to everything very attractive either…
Well, uh, there are 2,430 Major League games every year. Any kind of fantasy analysis necessarily involves looking at numbers pertaining to players whose games you might not always watch.
And as difficult as it might be to believe, the world doesn’t revolve around the Yankees. It sounds like you watch a great deal of Yankees games. Maybe you’d care to shed some light on the early season struggles of Dan Uggla? Scouting observations only, please, as we now know better than to look to the numbers.
Also, you act as though watching an AB or two or ten would clue any reasonably knowledgeable baseball fan in to the fact that Gardner was standing too close to the plate. If you can make such quick and accurate diagnoses of a batter’s problems, you should probably be a hitting coach somewhere.
Basically, save the indignation and faux-cursing. Fantasy analysts do the best they can with the numbers and the games they do watch. Take it or leave it.
*too far. Also, I apologize if I’m wrong and you’re not a Yankees fan. But the basic point stands.
Davisnc, you didn’t go too far, go further! The guy had a reasonable point about Gardner, but instead of adding to the discussion, he was vulgar and came off as an arogant shmuck! I understand why you would think he is a Yankee fan!
Actually, the better point here is – Why was Gardner’s stance messed up coming out of spring training and undiagnosed for a month? If he is that clueless and the coaches are that inept, my confidence in Gardner as a player actually just went down some. I always thought he would bounce back, but since it takes a month to recover when something goes out of whack for him… bad sign!
They had adjusted his swing earlier in the spring, keeping 2 hands on the bat on his follow through.
They saw the results of that and decided that he needed to be moved closer to the plate because of the contact his new swing produced.
I’m missing what they did wrong here.
Not to rain too much on your parade, but isn’t 90 AB’s a bit of SSS to be referring to K rates? I mean a hitter who is out of sync or struggling to see pitches is going to K at higher rate than usual. It’s more like a symptom, especially in April.
I picked up Gardner in an 11 team wOBA league last week. To me it was just a matter of time and he’s more than a placeholder for Domonic Brown or Logan Morrison.
I don’t want to get into the luck rant. So I’ll just separately state that Kevin Long worked with him to get his swing fixed. And the results followed literally within five ABs. If not for that piece of information, we should go with luck. That’s not what happened in reality. Gardner is back on track and will be leading off again soon.