What about Granderson? I agree, though. Gardner is a good ball player... He gets a raw deal from fans when he fucks up.
I'd rather have Gardner than Granderson, honestly. Two years younger, and a lot cheaper. I've liked Gardner since his first season and thought he was an ideal leadoff hitter. There aren't many guys with his combination of base-stealing ability and OBP.
Ditto. He works the count, in addition to wreaking havoc on the basepaths. He should be leading off, but we don't need to get into why he isn't.
The Yankees are a corporation, not a baseball team. Everyone knows that the best thing for the baseball team would be Gardner at the top of the lineup and Jeter at the bottom (against righties). But making money is the top priority. Money that they can re-invest into 30-something year old free agents and not the draft or international free agency, like a baseball team would. The only hope is that with the 3000 hit milestone behind us, people will actually stop paying money to see a well below average baseball player that threw a hissy fit this off-season for getting offered a contract three times more than he's worth on the field.
Fortunately, the Yankees are a filthy rich corporation that can invest in thirtysomething free agents while still investing heavily in the draft and international scouting/signing. But agreed on all other points.
They do, but it's frustrating to see them continue to maintain the highest major league payroll year after year with no sign of significant reduction and then not have that same philosophy with amateur talent. They're always among the highest spenders, but there's no reason they shouldn't be blowing teams out of the water on that level.
I agree, but amateur talent is also riskier. For all the down sides of signing A-Rod and Jeter to ridiculous contracts, they are more of a known quantity and thus less of a risk. Business-wise, they make their money back on those signings far more often than they don't. (At least, they have been since '94 or so.) And they probably have better luck with those signings than they do with the amateur talent. That's not to say there haven't been dumb contracts handed out by the big club, baseball-wise. Just that they're probably in the black overall. Of course, at the minor league level, you're also talking about far less money. I'd have to imagine the Yankees have people looking at this from both the economic and the baseball side of things, including how the latter affects the former.
Chad Jennings provides this stat: Gardner's OBP since the ASB is .640. I'll provide this one: Jeter's OBP since his five hit game is .261. Gardner is streaky as hell. Jeter is consistently mediocre.
