If You Must Have One Old Broken Down Lefty Off The Bench...

...make it Garret Anderson!

The Dodgers added Anderson today on a minor league contract, and he'll supposedly compete with Brian Giles and Doug Mientkiewicz for the role of 5th outfielder/left handed batter off the bench.

Now, we can debate whether or not we really need a 5th outfielder¹ or if we could fill the role of left handed batter with a better option than one of the aforementioned.²

1. We don't.
2. We could.

...however, we do have Joe Torre as a manager, so having an old busted up veteran to fill the unnecessary role is almost a guarantee.

So, who to pick out of the three? All three are pretty much question marks.

Mientkiewicz only had 18 at-bats last year, and wasn't bad, but that's such a small sample size, you can't draw anything from it. He still deserves a spot and a chance in Spring Training, but for the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to rule him out.

I mean, come on, this was the highlight of his season.

So that brings us to Brian Giles and Garret Anderson.

Brian Giles had a horrid season last year, splitting half the time being injured and the other half being a terrible hitter. I've said it before, but his numbers last year (.191, 2 HR, .548 OPS!) dipped into Andruw Jones-ian territory. And that's not 20 at-bats. That's 225 at-bats! That's a good 2/5th's of a season.

Garret Anderson, on the other hand, has been slowly melting, statistically speaking. Average, On-Base Percentage, Slugging, and Homeruns have been on a downward trend the last three years. So, now the question is, has he bottomed out, or does he still have room to slide more?

Between the last two, Giles has far bigger upside, in that, if he returns to form as the Brian Giles of old, he can make a huge impact on the team. However, I'm going to say there's only a 10% chance of that happening, whereas with Anderson, I feel like we know what we can get from him.

I'm going to go out on a limb here (so Anderson can screw me over) and say that I think Anderson has fallen to his lowest level. Anderson hit .268 (.705 OPS) with 13 HRs in a weak 2009 season and I feel that's probably similar to what he would do if we threw him out there everyday in 2010, which would be really terrible if he was going to be our starting left fielder, but not the worst thing if you are going to make him a left handed pinch hitter, a la Jim Thome.

Basically, what I'm saying is, if we absolutely, positively, gots-to have a 5th outfielder/left handed pinch hitter/old person, then I'm ok with Garret Anderson for the job.

"I'm your man!"