Before you all jump on the Melky Cabrera bandwagon, realize, he's still the same guy he was last year who started off the season with 4 homers by April 24th. Remember? He had a very solid April hitting 299... after that...it went downhill, 234. in May and 207. in June.
Just remember who brings more to the teams overall winning mentality, clearly Gardner. There will be games where the Yankees will go up against team's aces and be dominated throughout the game, days like these the Yankees will rely on scrappy infield singles by Gardner to get on base. Gardner can put himself into scoring position with his speed and ofcourse we all know who follows him in the order, Jeter, Damon and Teixeira. Melky... can't really do those things, he got thrown out at second right before Ransom ripped a double which would have scored him. He also can be to blame for the 14 inning affair that we all sat through yesterday striking out with the bases loaded and 0 outs.
Ofcourse Gardner followed him with 1 out and the bases loaded and popped up, but still, put the bat on the ball. Girardi will still start Gardner, which is good, but i've talked to several Yankees fans who have told me they would prefer Melky after watching his recent success.
I'm happy for Melky Cabrera, it's exciting to hit a walk-off homerun, and he probably earned himself another start, but we need to remember that Gardner is the dynamic player the Yankees need, not Melky.
2 comments:
Except for all of Gardner's speed, he can't steal first base.
I know we're talking about small sample sizes here but he has no ability to drive the ball (.071 ISO) and puts a ton of balls on the turf (43.6% GB rate this year) that not even he can always leg out to get on first.
This wouldn't be so bad if he was drawing walks, but he has only 3 of those in 55 PAs. He tore up Spring Training but that's hardly the equivalent to being able to perform at the dish against major league pitching.
And somehow his speed hasn't correlated into good defense either, as he has the fifth worst UZR/150 in all of baseball... the point here isn't that Melky Cabrera is the answer, but it's pretty apparent that Gardner isn't either and as of this moment his lineup presence does more harm than good.
the point i intended to make in the post was that melky shouldn't start over Gardner. Neither players are the answer, but Gardner is the better option and can bring more to the team.
i just wish he would learn to keep hitting the ball on the ground and stop popping it up... we got enough of that with Melky last year...
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