Cole Garner: Non-Tendered Diamond in the Rough?

While browsing the list of players that were non-tendered on December 12th I came across a name I recognized from my high school playing days. This former top prospect is a free agent and could make for a very nice buy-low guy. I'll break it down after the jump...

Cole Garner, a corner outfielder out of the Long Beach area, raked high school pitching some ten years ago. He was drafted out of high school in the the 26th round in 2003 and after a few years in Rookie/Low-A ball, Garner rose through the ranks to become one of the top OF prospects in the Rockies' system.

Garner continued to contribute in the upper-minors and even had a brief cup of coffee with the big league club this past Summer. However, Garner was recently non-tendered by Colorado. Maybe I'm missing something, but there appears to be a lot to like about Garner who would provide nice organizational depth in the upper-minors at the very least.

In 2009, Garner put up a .288/.342/.492 slash in AA. His solid year earned him a spot in AAA Colorado Springs for the start of the 2010 season.

Garner followed that up with a .304/.374/.520 season in 111 games for the Colorado Springs Sky Sox in 2010 and was on his way to an even better season in 2011 (.330/.366/.557) but an injury cut his season short at just 46 games. I have searched for more information about the injury that ended his 2011 season, after all, it could be the reason the Rockies decided not to tender a contract to Cole, but I didn't find anything.

Out of curiosity I took Garner's 2010 and 2011 AAA numbers (157 games) and plugged them into this MLE calculator. The results weren't bad...

When converting his AAA numbers in Colorado Springs to The Big A, the calculator credits Cole with a .260/.312/.422 slash line. Nothing extraordinary by any means, but that adds up to a .329 wOBA. Admittedly, I don't know much about Garner's defensive ability, but a .329 wOBA with league average defense is good for 2 WAR over 600 major league plate appearances.

If this is the kind of production Garner could bring to the table he would be a nice piece to add for organizational depth down the road. I certainly wouldn't mind a 2 WAR player waiting in AAA. I'm not convinced Ryan Langerhans or even Jeremy Moore provide that quality of depth.

Kick the tires, Jerry!