Many people seem to have low expectations and even less optimism when discussing Curtis Granderson. It seems like his bad season was what should be expected as everyone points to his age and playing in more of a pitcher’s park than Yankee Stadium was. However, while he only had a pathetic 1.0 WAR last year, that was worse than even Ruben Tejada, let’s breakdown the factors that led up to this.
Granderson was placed in right field last year to accommodate Chris Young and Eric Young. Chris was such a proud signing that he was promised certain opportunities even though he had stunk for three years running and was pronounced the starting center fielder a week before the opener by that noted player development guru, Terry Collins, and Eric was “the only leadoff hitter” on the roster. So as the right fielder by default, Granderson’s Fangraphs defensive rating of -17.2 was mostly due to his poor throwing arm (he rated the worst of all qualifying right fielders) because he had a 43% success rate of catching fly balls that were in the “unlikely” category (10%-40% chance of being caught). That’s pretty good! So he definitely can cover ground. Shifting to left field and not needing to have a good arm while covering pretty good ground can only make that defensive rating shoot up, thus increasing his overall WAR.
Now for the offense. He rated 43rd offensively for all qualified outfielders with a 6.5 rating. Not great, but that is the middle of the pack for a player that last year everyone agrees just sucked at times. Miscast once again, but this time in his offensive role, first he was a cleanup hitter and having the pressure of being in a spot he wasn’t familiar with and then he was put in the table setting spots of #1 and #2 in which he hit a dreadful .198 in about 1/3 of his at bats. But, when placed in a less pressure #5 or #6 spots, he hit .268.
Therefore, between being in a comfort zone offensively and being moved to a more favorable defensive position according to his abilities, I don’t see why he couldn’t have a season of 2.8 WAR like Daniel Murphy had last year who also was poor defensively and not overly impressive offensively other than his doubles, but was more a consistent accumulator of statistics by playing all the time thus scoring alot of runs despite an ordinary .332 OBP.
Lastly, while I am not Granderson’s lawyer, one thing that warms the heart of us fans is clutch hitting. Guess who was #1 of the Mets qualified hitters according to Fangraphs? Yep, the Grandy man.
I’m not expecting miracles, but I think he can do a .269/.340/.435 stat line, with 75 runs scored as I expect TDA and Flores behind him to rock, 80 RBI, and 25 homeruns. This is exactly what the Mets need from Granderson and the rest of the lineup. Steady and consistent production according to their histories and let the pitching staff carry the team.
So, let’s take a more objective view of this player before he is pronounced a complete bust and give him another year in more favorable conditions.
