Story of a Season: Curtis Granderson

By On October 19, 2011 · 3 Comments · In Player Analysis

Other Players

may have slumped in September (.304 wOBA/85 wRC+), but every other month aside from that was nothing short of fantastic. Taking out the final month of the season, Granderson’s worst month in terms of wOBA/wRC+ was June when he hit “only” .363/125. If he did that for the entire year, it would’ve been a productive season for Granderson. Instead, he turned in career highs in homers (41), walk rate (12.3), Iso (.290), and wRC+ (146). His wOBA (.395) and fWAR (7.0) were both the second highest marks of his career (both fell just short of his .395 and 7.8 marks in 2007).

The biggest change in Granderson was his #cured status against left handed pitching. He continued his turn around from the latter part of 2011 and ended up punishing left handed pitching this year, racking up a .325 (!) Iso against same handed pitchers, leading to a .400 wOBA and a 151 wRC+. Hopefully, this continues into 2012. But, can we count on it? The analytic part of me says “Let’s hold off a bit. After all, this is the exception, not the rule.” However, the other side of me knows that Granderson and hitting coach Kevin Long did tangible work on the former’s swing to correct this issue. It’s not as if Curtis just had a power surge or BABIP spike against lefties; real work was done to repair a hole in Grandy’s game, and that gives me faith in this trend continuing into 2012 an beyond.

Here’s a fun thing I found out while researching Granderson’s splits: In terms of wOBA/wRC+, Granderson hit exactly the same on the road as he did at home. In the Bronx and away from YS3, he hit to a .394 wOBA and a 146 wRC+. That’s pretty cool.

Like ‘s, there really isn’t much to say about Granderson’s 2011 season that’s horribly interesting or controversial. He ripped the cover off the ball from wire-to-wire and left us all smiling. I think we anticipated a good season from Curtis in 2011, but I don’t think we envisioned it going this well. Thanks for an awesome, awesome year, Curtis.

Tagged with: •
 
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Delicious Digg

3 Responses to Story of a Season: Curtis Granderson

  1. Michael P. says:
    October 19, 2011 at 11:59 am

    I know no one is going to believe me but this is kind of what I expected from him coming over from Detroit. He is in a better lineup and hit 30 consistently in Comerica so to see him hit 40 homers in Yankee stadium is nice but not exceeding my expectations. I know it doesn’t always work like that but I mean it made sense to me at the time.

    Reply
    • T.O. Chris says:
      October 19, 2011 at 5:52 pm

      He actually only hit 30 home runs once while in Detroit, and it was 30 on the nose. So I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t see this coming. I thought he would be somewhere between 25-35 yearly, with the high side of 35 being more rare than the low side of 25.

      I’m still somewhat skeptical on whether or not he can do it again. SO I hope he proves me wrong and once again hits 40, we’ll have to wait and see.

      I just hope he continues to hit 2nd or 3rd in the order, and the Yankees don’t fall so in love with the number 41 that they drop him to 4th or 5th ion the lineup. I think that would lower the amount of fastballs he sees, thus lowering the amount of HRs he hits.

      Reply
      • Michael P. says:
        October 19, 2011 at 6:54 pm

        Yes he crushes fastballs. He should always be kept in front of Cano. If thats 2nd in the lineup against lefties (after jeter), or 3rd in the lineup against righties (after gardner and Jeter) it makes no difference to me. Who hits behind Cano though is another question…

        Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Set your Twitter account name in your settings to use the TwitterBar Section.