Brett Gardner Was The Best Defensive Left Fielder Ever

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BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – SEPTEMBER 15: Brett Gardner #11 of the New York Yankees looks on during a pitching change against the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards on September 15, 2021 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)

Here’s one for the statistics fans and the statistics cynics alike. Something that on first pass sounds wrong, but isn’t.

Not Barry Bonds. Not Ted Williams. Not Ricky Henderson, Stan Musial or Carl Yastrzemski. None of those. Instead, the title of the best defensive left fielder in the history of Major League Baseball goes to a former New York Yankees mainstay who never touched overt stardom – at least, if one particular statistic is to be believed.

According to Baseball-Reference’s positional metrics, Brett Gardner holds the highest career defensive Wins Above Replacement (dWAR) ever accumulated by a primary left fielder. And he is not just top, but top by quite a long way. There is measurable separation between him, Bonds in a distant second place, and then every other player who spent the majority of their career at the position.

Brett Gardner, The Man Barry Bonds Could Have Been

dWAR is Baseball-Reference’s attempt to isolate the number of wins a player contributes on defense relative to a replacement-level fielder at the same position. It incorporates range, arm value, double-play impact, outfield positioning and positional difficulty. At its core is Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), which is converted to runs above or below average and then translated into wins.

Because left field traditionally carries a lower positional adjustment than center field or shortstop – it is, traditionally, a place to hide the weaker defensive players – players at the position rarely accumulate high dWAR totals. The system therefore expects fewer opportunities and discounts the defensive difficulty. For that reason, left fielders typically gain most of their WAR from offense. Gardner, though, is an outlier, because his defensive run totals were high enough to overcome the position’s negative adjustment.

Across his 14 seasons with the Yankees, Gardner produced multiple years of double-digit DRS in left field, including seasons where he ranked among league leaders in outfield range and conversion rates on balls hit into the gaps. He logged 13,321.2 regular season innings in the outfield, with 8,287.2 coming in left, and his cumulative defensive output remained above average into his mid-30s.

Gardner’s career dWAR rating is +12.9. Bonds is in second place with +7.9. Alex Gordon is third with 7.1, B.J. Surhoff is fourth with 6.9, and Steven Kwan is fifth with +4.7 in only four years. No one else in history has more than +3.2. Gardner has not just led the pack, but lapped it.

Gardner’s Speed Separated Him

Through his Yankees career, Gardner was moved between left field and center, depending on his teammates at the time. Left field, perhaps, was a position more commensurate with his arm strength. As he aged, though, Gardner did a good job of retaining the speed that was the most important attribute in his game.

On the offensive side, Gardner stole 47 bases in 2010, 49 in 2011 and 24 in 2013, but on the defensive side, that quickness translated directly into outfield recovery time and closing speed. Baseball-Reference’s range factor and total zone ratings credited him with more successful plays outside of the average left fielder’s estimated coverage area. His arm value was neutral to slightly positive, but it did not detract from his totals because range accounted for the majority of his saved runs.

Because of his speed, his jumps, his reads, his range and the generous proportions of the former Yankee Stadium, in 2010, Gardner – who had hit only five home runs and a 105 OPS+ – finished with a 7.4 WAR. It ranked seventh in the entirety of the majors; Albert Pujols, still at his apex at the time, posted only 7.4. And as opposed to Pujols, Gardner did it through defense and base-running. Notwithstanding the quality of a young Bonds, Gardner’s claim to be the best at his position does not come from nothing.

The Context Of Playing Left Not Center

Many of the best defensive outfielders in MLB history played center field, where advanced metrics award a larger positional adjustment. Left fielders rarely retain long-term defensive value because the position is often used for bat-first players. As a result, the dWAR leaderboard for LF is typically topped by players with atypical athletic profiles for the position. Gardner’s lead reflects that pattern: his total dWAR exceeds the next tier of players by multiple wins, and the gap is large enough that adjustments to older defensive data are unlikely to close it.

Gardner finished his career with a total WAR above 40, with a meaningful share derived from defense rather than offense. His offensive line included a .256 average, .342 on-base percentage, 139 home runs, and a 104 OPS+ across 1,688 games, but those numbers played a secondary role in his overall valuation. His defensive contribution allowed him to maintain starting roles even in seasons with league-average hitting, and his efficiency in left field remained the core of his long-term roster stability.

The ranking does not claim that Gardner was the most athletic or the most visually dominant left fielder. It is objective rather than subjective. Nevertheless, Gardner’s accumulated defensive value places him first all-time among primary left fielders, with a gap to the field, and only Kwan with a chance of getting in his orbit. Who knew?

Mark Deeks I am continuously intrigued by the esoterica and minutiae of all the aspects of building a basketball team. I want to understand how to build the best basketball teams possible. No, I don’t know why, either. More about Mark Deeks