Everyone’s a crapshoot.

I’m pretty sure Choo had more outfield assists, so that settles it.

Gload and Cairo were worse, but they probably didn’t have enough AB to make the list. Casey Kotchman was worse, too, but he fled for the NL, where his OPS dropped even more for the Braves. Garko was pretty bad, though. Only Barton, Cairo and Gload had fewer homers. On the upside, he had more triples than Millar and Kotchman combined.

Just like Choo’s performance at the end of the season, I think that Garko’s started to turn it around. And I admit, he sure as hell stunk for a good part of the year. I think he can play pretty close to his September stats for most of next year.

BTW, you think that Garko will get more PT than Choo? Garko’s got at least as much competition for PT as Choo. It’s at the very least a wash.

In 2006, Garko hit .247/.352/.420 in triple-A. In 2005, he hit .303/.384/.498 in triple-A.

I don’t think he’s suffering from Lofton disease, so much as suffering from just-isn’t-that-good disease. I think there’s probably a chance that he returns to 2007 form, but that’s his ceiling and best-case-scenario. And if he doesn’t return fully to 2007 form, he’s probably a liability.

Look, we are all in Garko’s corner, it’s just that some of us are clear on his limitations. The idea that Garko has anything on Lofton is a bad joke. Lofton finished his last season ranked #10 among all active players for times on base. Garko likely will never finish in the Top 10 in any season, let alone for his career.

Contact hitting is the only thing Garko really has ever done well, but his career best is .289, while Lofton has hit better than .300 in eight different full seasons. Lofton finished exactly fourth in batting average three times, while Garko has yet to crack the Top 30.

There is no reason to think Lofton isn’t a pretty smart guy in conventional terms, by the way — no puzzling career moves or foolish quotes that I can remember, and he did was at Arizona for three years. It ain’t Stanford, but he is better educated than the great majority of major leaguers.

But when it comes to baseball smarts, Lofton leaves Garko in the dust. Lofton has a career walk rate of 10.2, while Garko’s is 7.1. What does that tell us about which one is a “pretty smart guy?” If Garko’s approach to the plate were more intelligent — more fundamentally sound — we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Whatever his faults, Kenny drew far more walks and, swung at more strikes, hit the ball harder, made fewer outs and simply got on base more.

I’d also suggest that it takes some kind of smarts to win five straight stolen base titles — Lofton was very fast, but he wasn’t the fastest player in the majors during his career. He he finished as the active leader with 622 — the current active leader has 429. In fact, only four active players are even within 300 of Lofton, and at least two of those four shouldn’t be anything but a bench guy at this point.

He also drove in 255 runs in 272 sac-fly situations, including 65 sac flys. Garko has been good but not as good, with 55 RBI in 72 sac-fly situations. Who’s smarter? Who’s better at tailoring his game better to the situation?

Fact is, there’s no reason to doubt Lofton’s intelligence, and there’s plenty of reason to doubt Garko’s ability to transmute whatever he does or doesn’t understand about hitting into his actual quality of play. If his approach to hitting were as sound as Lofton’s — even in his good months — then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Not to mention, if he were capable of winning five SB titles and four Gold Gloves in CF, then we wouldn’t care that he’s such a mediocre hitter.