SEATTLE — No matter whether you love him or hate him — and he appears surprisingly polarizing among Yankees fans — no one has ever accused Brett Gardner of being distracted on the field.
Yet the Yankees’ longest-tenured player approaches his career with enough awareness and knowledge that, when The Post spoke with him Wednesday about his major-league service time approaching the important 10-year milestone, Gardner pounced on it like a searing line drive into the left-field corner.
“I already have it,” he said. “Within the last month or so.”
That service-time trade leverage becomes another factor in what looks like a challenging call for the Yankees: Should they bring back Gardner for 2019?
As per the extension that Gardner signed in spring training of 2014, the Yankees have a $12.5 million team option on him next year against a $2-million buyout, making it a $10.5-million decision.
“I haven’t put too much thought into next year yet,” Gardner said. “And to be honest, I really don’t plan to until after the season. That’s kind of how I always try to compartmentalize things like that.”
Makes sense, and the same goes for the Yankees not showing their hand before the season has concluded. Both will try to halt this season’s discouraging trend line, and Gardner has been part of the problem lately.
The 35-year-old has continued a career-long pattern of second-half fades. Entering Friday night’s game with the Mariners at Safeco Field, Gardner had put up a terrible .205/.286/.313 slash line in 44 games since the All-Star break, which put him at a substandard .228/.325/.372 altogether. He went 1-for-2 and scored a run in the Yankees’ 4-0 win.
“Individually, especially over the last month or so, I’ve struggled. It’s been frustrating,” Gardner said. “… When you’re struggling a little bit and the team’s not playing well, it’s some of the toughest times for me.”
Most noticeable in his second half has been the change in his strikeouts-to-walks ratio, from 55 whiffs and 43 free passes in the first half to 39 and 17 in the second. For the season, though, his 94-to-60 margin doesn’t differ much at all from last year’s, say, of 122-to-72.
Looking at his 2018 season as a whole, the most noticeable disparity can be seen in his hitting fewer line drives (from 22.3 percent in 2017 to 16.8 percent in 2018, as per FanGraphs) and more groundballs (from 44.5 percent last year to 49.5 percent this year).
“I think more than anything, it just has to do with me being in a good, consistent position, a strong position to hit,” Gardner said. “And when I’m down on my legs and I’m driving down through the baseball and creating a little bit of backspin and hitting balls on a line, that’s where I need to be. And for whatever reason, sometimes I’ll get to that spot and I maybe have trouble keeping it.”
“Timing, for me, has been one of the main reasons,” Yankees hitting coach Marcus Thames said of Gardner’s struggles. “When you’re a little late, sometimes you have to rush your swing, and you hit the ball on the ground a little bit more. We’ve just got to keep working in the cages and get him to where he needs to be.”
Thames, a member of the Yankees’ staff since 2016, played with Gardner on the 2010 Yankees, so he has seen from multiple vantage points the type of teammate he is.
“He’s not afraid to go up and talk to the young guys, keep them positive when they’re struggling,” Thames said of Gardner. “He’s been great.”
And then there’s his defense and baserunning, which still rate as considerable assets by any and all measures.
Entering Friday, Gardner’s FanGraphs “Dollars” value — what a team would have to pay in the free-agent market for Gardner’s total production — was $19.2 million, meaning the Yankees were doing well by paying him $11.5 million.
So what to do with him for 2019? The Yankees have the Aarons, Hicks and Judge, under team control, and Giancarlo Stanton’s contract runs for nine more seasons. Gary Sanchez’s defensive woes at catcher call into question whether he needs more at-bats at designated hitter, which would consequently force Stanton into more outfield reps.
Outfield prospect Clint Frazier is still around, although the concussion that ruined his year also clouds his future, and I’d face a $250 fine from the National Clickbait Association if I didn’t discuss the Yankees’ future outfield without mentioning Bryce Harper as an option.
The Yankees could pick up Gardner’s option and look to trade him, although his 10 years of service give him authority to block a trade anywhere.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Gardner said.
If he can look more like his best self before getting to the bridge, that would help him quite a bit.