With Melky Cabrera struggling and Brett Gardner surging in AAA, a lot of Yankees fans have been clamoring for the speedy CF to be promoted. If you recall my article earlier in the year, I am not a believer in Gardner as an everyday player. But with the way he's performed, I felt I should take another look.

His line is phenomenal, batting .295 with a .414 OBP and amazing -- for him, anyway -- .443 SLG. His SB% isn't great (78%) but he was playing through an injury early in the year.

On the other hand, he's still striking out at a horrifying rate for someone with little power; in fact, he's striking out slightly more often than he ever has before. That has come with his highest walk rate of his career, but once again I wonder if the walks will translate to the majors for someone who's so unlikely to punish pitchers that challenge him.

To see if my hypothesis is supported, I put Gardner's numbers in Dan Szymborski's xMLE spreadsheet. Gardner's 2008 to date translates to .254/.353/.356 with 22 SB and 8 CS.

If you assume that this season represents Gardner's true talent level (an iffy presumption at best) and Melky's current production is about as good as it gets, then you'd probably be a little better off with Gardner in CF.

Where it gets complicated is what you do with the one that's not starting. My personal belief is a team is more likely to overvalue Gardner than Melky because of speed, and if that's the case I would keep Gardner in AAA in hopes he can be traded to address a weakness. At the same time, if someone would give up something valuable for Melky I would not hesitate to trade him and put Gardner in his place. I'm still not a believer, but he doesn't have to do much to produce as much as Melky has.