The Brett Gardner All-Stars

The New York Yankees are the Tiffany Franchise. 27 rings. Hall of Famers galore. The highest-valued team in Major League Baseball.  Yet aside from Derek Jeter, the fans of the Bronx Bombers aren’t going to tell you the definitive Yankee of the 2000s and 2010s was one of the All-Stars.

They’d want to tell you about Brett Gardner.

Brett Gardner was a 14-year Yankee lifer who was a Jason Statham reincarnation who barked at umpires and was your definitive lunch-pale guy. He made one All-Star team and maybe “earned his pinstripes” from the fans more than anyone else because he did what Aaron Boone and every perception of entitlement on a Yankees team didn’t. His Wikipedia page literally talks about his “tenacity” and “blue collar approach” as a leader.

He’s the lifer who plainly got and kept the job by trying harder and caring more than everyone else, as cliché as that sounds. The sport is so filled with baseball reference pages of advanced analytics and stats, and Gardner defies every logic that comes with that, which is what makes someone a fan favorite.

It’s hard to have tenures as longer as Gardner, but there are certainly cases where if you see a Brett Gardner on a team, you know it in your heart.

Gardner has been out of the league for 5 years now, but the reason I’m bringing him up is that it’s very difficult not to see many similarities in the relationship that the Cubs have with Ian Happ. He was an All-Star in 2022 and a Gold Glove winner. He’s kind of bizarro from a demeanor in that he has an immense amount of dry humor and is constantly self-deprecating, rather than Gardner’s bald-headed abrasiveness (and Happ has significantly more hair). Still, he’s the tenured vet for almost a decade who has arguably been the face of the franchise ever since the stars of the legendary 2016 team left.

He’s the locker room guy who has a podcast with his fellow teammates and Jomboy Media. Offensively, he’s just the solid bat in the lineup that will occasionally get some bombs lifted with the Wrigley wind into the Ivy, but you love the guy who will still get down and dirty with a diving catch into the bleachers.

Happ is a Chicago-style deep dish Brett Gardner if you ask anyone wearing Cubbie blue. He had a chance to leave, but will likely always be remembered as a Cub lifer.

Here are some fellow potential Brett Gardner All-Stars.

Detroit Tigers // Kerry Carpenter

Ironically, the Tigers’ roster is so young that a player who’s only 28 and has been with the team for 4 years is a Brett Gardner guy, but that’s the energy that Kerry Carpenter, or Kerry Bonds to the fans, brings.

His splits are so lopsided as an explosive bat against right-handed pitching as opposed to being one of the worst hitters in baseball when playing lefties that he has to platoon,.246 as opposed to .143, but when Kerry is up at the plate, and there’s a right-handed pitcher on the mound, it usually goes to the moon. Detroit faithful will still ride with him forever for those moments.

Pittsburgh Pirates // Bryan Reynolds

It’s kind of ironic that Bryan Reynolds is here considering that he was once the highest-paid Pirate in history, but there may not be someone who is going to embody what it means to be a Brett Gardner All-Star going forward. He walked back a trade request and has remained with the Pirates despite their downfall before the newer, brighter Skenes-and-prospects era took off. The switch-hitter with the mustache is about as normal as it gets.

The Pirates have done press-related promotions around him, centering on how he is hard to read. But he just bats around the average mark, hits above 25 homers, and is competent at the plate and as a defender, and the reality that he was one of the only guys to NOT be traded during the dark times is going to live on forever in the Yinzers’ hearts.

Cincinnati Reds // Tyler Stephenson

Stephenson just feels like a Reds-lifer. He’s the constant backstop they took to be the battery in 2015, and, despite battling early injuries, has remained the cornerstone of that pitching staff. It’s simply so difficult to both post for games and hit with a high OPS as a catcher. While Stephenson is yet to make any All-Star appearances, he just seems like the guy who is always going to be around, involved in the community, and remembered for being towards the bottom of the lineup and still getting a knock as a catcher for the next decade in Cincy, and is their man.

A franchise catcher with a lifelong attachment to a team goes a long way, and Stephenson, on this Reds’ rise to the top, has been one of the faces of it.

Tampa Bay Rays // Yandy Diaz

Think about the Tampa Bay Rays organization as a whole for a moment; what are they known for? Aside from Evan Longoria and playoff Randy Arozarena (who was then traded), they’re the small-market nerds known for NOT having a “jersey guy” because they operate like a business, selling high on talent for depth and outsmarting us with analytics to set them up with prospects going forward. They also play in the Trop, where it always looks like there are just a few hundred fans, and they are rarely, if ever, on national television.

Yandy Diaz has quietly been the Rays’ jersey guy since 2019. He’s got the one All-Star appearance and a Silver Slugger and a 2023 batting title, and maybe only the Floridians will tell you that. He’s consistently one of the most disciplined sluggers in the game, but when he decides to actually swing, it looks like he’s flipping a toothpick before launching an effortless but not brash bat flip.

Junior Caminero is looking like he could potentially be the Rays’ new face going forward, but it has and always will be Yandy for this era of Tampa for Dickie V and the few hundred others that were capable of navigating the traffic to that displaced juice box of a ballpark.