I miss him already.
Obviously too early to be making this statement, but he looked really patient in that at bat. Maybe his SO numbers will be down this year.
he's a career .272/.344/.484 with plus D in CF. His K rate is well within the norm.
He's been in the top 17 in K's 3 or the last 4 seasons. I'm as big a Granderson apologist as there is, but you're wrong in saying his K rate is within the norm. 2008 definitely looks like the anomaly of his career. That being said, his Ks won't hurt as much at the back of the NY lineup as they did leading off in Detroit.
I fear he's going to cite some sabermetrics to make his point.
Being in the top 17 in K's for a leadoff hitter is unacceptable no matter what the metrics say. I love Curtis, but for what the Tiggies got in return I think it was a good move by Dombrowski.
To his credit, his K rates have gone down a bit since his earlier years but they are still way too high for a leadoff hitter.
If anything, his saber numbers would mostly point towards an increase in batting average and probably a slight decrease in his K numbers. His power numbers are going to be inflated because of the effect new Yankee Stadium has on LHH, so there's that too.
And yes, for what we got back, it was a good deal to make, despite my allegiance to Granderson.
is also misplaced. he's a leadoff hitter because he's been put there, not because his skill set necessarily merits it. of your three best hitters, the guy with the highest OBP to SLG ratio should be leading off and he's not that kind of guy.
y'all need to read The Book.
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Playing-Percentages-Baseball/dp/1597971294
It's not misplaced because that IS where they played him. I'm not saying that's where he should have been playing.
blaming him for doing what makes him successful and a major league hitter.
His Career BABIP is like 320 or something, which is on the high side, and normally would indicate a drop is like, 20 or so points of batting average. Hitter's are very goofy with BABIP though because of the types of contact they get, and because he's been able to sustain it through his career I'm not expecting any type of drop off. Really he is what he is, He's gonna be about a 4 WAR player for his entire career, which is pretty good but not amazing.
$15 mil this season on the free market, so it's still a pretty big hit.
Might be a little high because of uneven salary distribution to what WAR gives out as a players value. It's not in the ridiculous range where it starts spitting out insane numbers, like Matt Holliday in 2008 being worth 28 million dollars.
a win was worth about 3.5 mil this offseason.
is 24%. Last season was 22%. League average is 17%. Egregious is 25%+
That's not taking into account his spot in the lineup, which has a huge effect on his overall value.....which is one of the reasons why he will likely be more valuable to New York hitting seventh than he would leading off in Detroit.
haven't done that math. he leads off once per game more than everyone else which means getting on base is at a premium...but not a big premium. one PA per game of an average hitter instead of a replacement level hitter isn't even 1 WAR over the season. and if your argument is that he's trading off times on base for outs, you're going to need to prove it. why would he do that? for two, why should we hold Granderson responsible for the manager's stupidity? he didn't ask to lead off.
I don't necessarily need to do a lot of math. Most of his WAR value, at least outside of '08, has been defensively....and when your overall WAR is a little less than four, that one PA per game that almost does add up to 1 WAR over the course of a season has an effect on your value.
that was an extreme example to show that it doesn't add up. and believe me the math has been done. there are lineup simulators, etc.
and no, most of his value has not come from his defense. he's a career .360 wOBA. that would be good enough to be above average at 1B. he's obviously a good defender, but he's also a really good hitter.
His career rate is 24%. Last season was 22%. League average is 17%. Egregious is 25%+.
Is there any reasoning behind this other than that 25% is a nice, "round" number to go by? If the league average is indeed 17%, then Granderson's career rate is 41% worse than average, and last year's rate was 29% worse than average. That sounds awful for any position, let alone one in which a player is especially supposed to be good at getting on base.
in 2009, average was about .20 k/pa with a stdev of .06. so yeah, i rounded a bit to 25% i don't really feel like running other years, because i know from having read so many stat lines about where you have to start worrying about K's necessitating a power/BABIP boost into a realm I don't suspect a prospect or whomever i'm mentally wishcasting can. tyler flowers, for example. josh fields was another of that type. granderson doesn't fall into that group because his BABIP and ISO are so high. that's what makes him special at the plate. the comments about his weaknesses are exaggerated if even worth mentioning. over the last three seasons, he's contributed 17th most wins above replacement of all position players and has added more runs above average with his bat than Jim Thome over that time span. he's been one of the best players in baseball since he started playing full time.
Big leaping catch in center
I like him already. Welcome Curtis! Stick it to Boston!
until the first "OMG TIGERS ARE STUPID" comment.
It'll come if Damon doesn't hit an even longer HR is his first at bat tomorrow.
that the largest ovation in Comerica Park this year (unless we win World Series in Detroit) will be Granderson's first at-bat when the Yankees visit.
I'm here for the negbang.
what a play by the gold glove all star AROD. nice DP
The Tigers being stupid or not is a family squabble I will stay out of as a Yankee fan. But you sir get a point as a fellow Kate fan.
I'm still a Fanderson of Curtis Granderson because he is the Manderson.
I'm wearing my Granderson shirt tomorrow for opening day, and it's going to hurt like hell.
Friggin' yankees....
Nice double steal brett gardner... I wish granderson would have gotten that runner in from third though.
Lets go Yankees
Victor Martinez looked like a dumy on that play...little league mistake. Yankees are looking excellent again! I cant stand Boston.
Granderson just struck out.
and a K by Granderson. I love what Curtis did for the city of Detroit, but as a player this sort of thing was getting old.
Thats the main reason Detroit traded Grandy. They loved his power and defense but his plate discipline was horrible and they wanted him as a leadoff man which he obviously isnt. Granderson will benefit though from Yankee Stadium and batting with so much talent around him.
Im a Tigers and Yankees fan so I dont so much mind the trade. Especially given how good Austin Jackson and Johnny Damon have looked.
Grandy's power numebrs should shoot up -- 40 homers, anybody? -- and he'll make the web gem plays in center that will make the casual fan think the Tigers did the baseball equivalent of drafting Darko Milicic. But he'll still be a hole in the lineup against lefties -- and an automatic out against lefty relievers -- and limits to his range and arm will offset his penchant for the spectacular. The Yankees can probably afford those deficiencies more than the Tigers could, so I'm excited the A-Jax era is at hand.
It's Marcus Thames that I'm going to miss.
is one of the 30 best position players in the game, then he'll probably be worth about that.
#28 in your programs
#1 in your hearts
#14 in the programs now.
Weirdly enough, so is Jackson.
about Granderson's strikeouts needs to go back and read their Bill James.
Why's that?
Not doubting, just wondering.
so he's only a couple ticks worse than average in the first place. In fact he was below his career rate in '09. But typically K rate and power are correlated, so the suggestion is that power hitters miss more in order to hit the ball harder. That scores more runs. And certainly there's no problem with Granderson's career line. Even last season despite a lot of bad luck he was still league average.
Maybe the best way of thinking about it is the alternative. A weak ground ball in the MLB is not sufficiently different to make up for the lack of power that comes with making that adjustment. Juan Pierre/Scott Podsednik types are absolutely not better hitters than Curtis Granderson, so why ask him to change?
Granderson doesn't hit for enough power or walk enough to make up for his strikeout rate. If you look at K% from last year, almost all of the top line players with K% around his had higher OPS's, a lot in the order of 50-100 points higher. If you take his career rates of 24 K% and 828 OPS, its a little better, but it's still not enough to overshadow the K's.
Curtis Granderson is an excellent player as a part to a championship level team, but he is not a centerpiece.
"Granderson doesn't hit for enough power or walk enough to make up for his strikeout rate."
If that were true, he wouldn't be an above average career hitter. Which he is. Do you think he would be even better if he changed something? I'm sure he's aware that he makes a relatively large percentage of his outs via strike out and would change that if he didn't think it would cost something else in his game. If the argument is that Granderson isn't great enough despite being very good already, then I don't get that. He's one of the best CFs in the game. He doesn't cost his team anything compared to all but the very best players in the league.
Also, if you're trying measure both on base and slugging skills equally, use wOBA, not OPS. If you just want to look at power, use ISO.
Did you just suggest that Granderson could be a better hitter but he thinks it would hurt his power numbers (or some other undetermined hitting statistic) so he chooses to strike out more? I don't even know what to say to that. He has never hit more than 30 homers or driven in more than 74 RBI. He isn't a power hitter.
I suggested that he is who he is and as such is a very fine ballplayer.
But he is a power hitter. League average SLG - AVG, known as Isolated Power (ISO) is ~ .150. His career ISO is over .200 and over the last 3 seasons he leads all qualified CFs in ISO. Over that period, he's hit for more power than Justin Morneau, Jack Cust, Carlos Lee, and Chipper Jones, among others. The reason he's an above average hitter is his power.
This is where sabermetrics fails.
one man's opinion? i doubt it.
Colin, as someone who has read plenty of Bill James, you're being WAY overly reductionist. NOBODY, including James, would claim that K's are irrelevent. They exert a tremendous negative pressure on batting average, which...is the largest component of OBP - the holy grail of offensive statistics. It's extremely difficult to strike out 200+ times and hit .270 - and if you can't hit that, it's extremely difficult to put up a "good" OBP (.350+?).
i may have said that wrt Granderson's K rate, but even then i don't think so. but it is. guy's been an above average hitter for 4 seasons with a 24% K rate. it's a non-issue.
Lots of comments about Grandy's K rate, but lets not forget about his complete inability to hit lefties.
0 for 1 with a K tonight.
.183 last season.
.210 with 169 Ks in 619 ABs lifetime.
I love Granderson, always will, but he has obvious deficiencies.