I didn’t want Brett Gardner back for the 2019 season. I had seen enough from the then-35-year-old outfielder and his career-worst season to want the Yankees to go in a different direction. Entering the first true season of this group’s championship window of opportunity, I wanted a younger and better left field, with the assumption Giancarlo Stanton would be primarily used as the designated hitter. I wanted the Yankees to sign Michael Brantley.
I’m not sure if the Yankees ever even gave a thought to signing someone other than Gardner because in the first minutes of free agency, they brought him back on a one-year, $7.5 million deal, believing his career-low .690 OPS in 2018 wasn’t indicative of who he was at what’s now considered to be an advanced age in baseball.
Gardner was said to be the team’s “fourth outfielder” entering 2019, a position which might have gone to Clint Frazier if not for a lost season due to unfortunate injuries. As a reserve player with extra rest, the logic was that Gardner would be more productive than he had been in the career-worst 2017.
In 2019, Gardner went from being the supposed fourth outfielder to being an everyday player. The same thing happened in 2020 and again in 2021. Gardner played the third-most games on the team in 2019, the fifth-most in 2020 and the third-most in 2021.
On Monday, Gardner’s agent Joe Bick said Gardner intended to play in 2022 and prefers to play for the Yankees.
With Aaron Judge, Joey Gallo and (unfortunately) Aaron Hicks under contract, along with Giancarlo Stanton, who the Yankees are cautious to ever let play the outfield (despite his increased production when he does), Gardner would at best be the team’s fifth outfielder. But fifth is still too high on the depth chart. As long as Gardner is on the roster, he will find his way into the lineup with regularity. Injuries will make sure of it.
Before Opening Day in 2019, Gardner went from fourth outfielder to starting center fielder as Hicks started the season on the injured list (after injuring his back on a 35-minute bus ride in spring training) and Stanton joined Hicks on the IL before April 1. On April 20, Aaron Judge joined them both. In what was supposed to be a season in which Gardner would transition from an everyday player to a role player, he played in 141 games.
In 2020, Gardner was back again as the fourth outfielder. Prior to the pandemic ruining and shortening the season, Hicks was set to miss half the season recovering from Tommy John surgery, Judge was going to miss about half the season after the Yankees were unable to diagnose his fractured rib and punctured lung and Stanton was also going to miss half the season with a calf injury. If the 2020 season started on time, some combination of Gardner, Clint Frazier, Mike Tauchman and Miguel Andujar was going to be the everyday outfield.
Spring training in 2021 started without Gardner, but a week into it, he was re-signed. Despite Aaron Boone opening spring training by saying Frazier was now the team’s starting left fielder, in the third game of the season Gardner was starting in left field and would go on to play 140 games during the regular season with only Judge and DJ LeMahieu playing more.
In 2019, the Yankees needed nine outfielders to get through the season. In only 60 games in 2020, they needed seven. In 2021, they used Gardner, Judge, Stanton, Gallo and Hicks, along with Frazier, Tauchman, Andujar, Tyler Wade, Greg Allen, Estevan Florial, Ryan LaMarre, Tim Locastro, Jonathan Davis, Trey Amburgey and Hoy Park.
Last season, the Yankees got a miraculous 287 combined games played from Judge (148) and Stanton (139), and if you’re counting on that type of health in 2022, well, there was a guy in New York who recently won the lottery for the second time in three years. Hicks has missed 251 of the Yankees’ last 401 regular-season and postseason games. He’s now 32 and the most games he has played in a season was 137 back in 2018, which was a hamstring injury, significant back injury and a surgically-repaired elbow and wrist ago. Thankfully, Gallo has been exceptionally healthy in his career.
Gardner can’t be even the Yankees’ fifth outfielder in 2022 because he can never just be a bench option used a couple of days a week. No fourth or fifth outfielder on the Yankees ever remains that.
But if injuries aren’t the reason Gardner becomes an everyday player for the Yankees again in 2022, his manager will be.
Under Boone, Gardner lost his job to Andrew McCutchen after the 2018 trade deadline. Gardner wasn’t in the lineup for the 2018 wild-card game against the A’s and wasn’t in the lineup for Game 1 of the 2018 ALDS against the Red Sox. But when Hicks went down with a hamstring injury in that Game 1, Gardner came off the bench to play the rest of that game, as well as Games 2 and 3. When Hicks was healthy enough to play in Game 4 with the Yankees facing elimination, Boone benched McCutchen in favor of Gardner.
In 2019, Gardner was supposed to be the team’s fourth outfielder for the second consecutive year. But in a season that became about replacement players and “the next man up,” Gardner found himself playing in 87 percent of the team’s games, batting in the Top 4 spots in the lineup 46 times in 141 games, and when the postseason started, Boone penciled him in as the team’s 3-hitter. He would bat third in all three games in the ALDS, and then again in the pivotal Game 3 of the ALCS against Gerrit Cole, in which his first-inning at-bat swung the game (and the series) in the eventual Yankees loss.
Gardner was awful for six of the eight weeks of the 2020 regular season, but the two weeks he was productive happened to come at the end of September and right before the expanded postseason. So when it came time to fill out the lineup card for Game 1 of the postseason, Gardner’s name was on it and Frazier’s wasn’t after Frazier carried the Yankees’ offense along with LeMahieu and Luke Voit through two forgettable months.
Spring training in 2021 started without Gardner, but a week into it, he was re-signed. Despite Aaron Boone opening spring training by saying Frazier was now the team’s starting left fielder, in the third game of the season Gardner was starting in left field and would go on to play 140 games during the regular season with only Judge and DJ LeMahieu playing more.
Boone loves his veterans and he loves Gardner. When the going gets tough, Boone goes to Gardner. When the Yankees’ backs are against the wall and their season is on the line facing elimination, Boone has gone with Gardner every time and every time the Yankees have been eliminated. Boone will continue to go with Gardner every time. He’s one of his guys, and being one of Boone’s guys is in no way tied to ability or performance.
As long as Gardner is a Yankee, he will play, and he will play nearly every day. If injuries don’t force him into the lineup, Boone will. It’s time to move on. It’s been time to move on.
Last modified: Jul 23, 2023
