There’s been some grumbling lately about the lack of production from the team’s corner outfielders. And when you take a look at their lines so far, it’s not hard to understand why. Michael Cuddyer has a .695 OPS while Curtis Granderson checks in with a .690 mark. When the two guys signed to (relatively) big-money deals are hanging out with Juan Lagares in offensive production metrics, it’s easy to be disappointed.
First, let’s start off by looking at what we were expecting from the corners before the start of the season. In our projection series, here’s what we had for the duo:
Cuddyer
.274/.340/.460 (Mets360)
.250/.324/.397 (me)
.254/.313/.414 (Steamer)
.271/.325/.450 (ZiPS)
Granderson
.239/.330/.415 (Mets360)
.244/.341/.420 (me)
.222/.314/.398 (Steamer)
.231/.319/.424 (ZiPS)
As a group, we expected an .800 OPS from Cuddyer and he’s 105 points from that mark. Granderson’s not as extreme, but we expected .745 and we’re getting 55 fewer points of OPS from him, too. On the surface, the disappointment seems valid. But it should be pointed out that both players got off to lousy starts in the first week or so and have been much better since that point.
The first five games of the season, Cuddyer was 4-20 with a .438 OPS. In 21 games since then, Cuddyer has a .763 OPS. And this is with a .268 BABIP. Cuddyer has a healthy .203 ISO and he has 7 BB and a HBP in 82 PA, so he’s doing a good job of getting on base in other ways besides hits. If Cuddyer, who has a lifetime .313 BABIP, just had a “normal” .300 mark in the category, he would be performing just as good, if not better, than our preseason expectations over his last 21 games.
Meanwhile, Granderson opened the season 1-18 and managed a .426 OPS thanks only to 9 BB in his first seven games. Since that point, Granderson has a .757 OPS over his last 20 games. After not being able to buy a hit his first week of the season, Granderson has a .358 BABIP since April 14.
Lately, we’ve talked a lot about batted ball exit speed. The encouraging thing about Granderson is that even when he was batting .056, he was hitting the ball with authority. He was being hurt by aggressive defensive shifts, fine defensive plays and rockets hit right at fielders.
On the play below from 4/11, Granderson hit a line drive at 101 mph. On all line drives, batters produced a .661 AVG in 2014 and that includes soft liners that even slow-pitch softball fielders turn into outs. The only way you turn a ball hit 101 mph into an out is if you don’t have to move very far, as Jace Peterson shows on this ball.
On this play from 4/13, Granderson hit a fly ball 97 mph. From Tony Blegnino’s research, we know that flies hit harder than 92.5 mph produce a .560 AVG and a 1.884 SLG. Instead of the double or triple that he deserved on this ball, Granderson was robbed by a great play by Ben Revere.
Hey, it’s baseball and these things happen. As Keith Hernandez is fond of saying, the guys on the other teams are trying, too. The old adage is that these things tend to even out in the end. Conventional wisdom says that the missiles hit right at fielders are made up by weak hit balls that land safely in the Bermuda Triangle among the second baseman, shortstop and center fielder.
Obviously, when Granderson has an .067 BABIP, we know that mark is going to improve going forward. If you watched the first seven games, you knew he was hitting the ball hard and eventually the hits were going to start falling in.
The challenge is when it’s not the first seven games of the season or it’s a larger sample where it’s not possible to remember the vast majority of anyone’s trips to the plate. Then advanced numbers allow you to have a better understanding of what’s going on.
Before any of us knew what BABIP meant, if we saw a stretch of games where a batter was hitting .282 – like Granderson has in his last 20 games – we would have said he was a veteran hitting his stride. Then, we see it with a .358 BABIP, it likely sends up a warning sign that this is above what we should expect going forward. Now, with batted ball speeds, we’re adding to our knowledge base. A .358 BABIP where the majority of balls are hit at 95 mph is a different beast than a stretch where there are many more Texas Leaguers and Baltimore Chops sprinkled in.
If you watch every PA and have a photographic memory – then these advanced stats don’t really serve much purpose. But if you don’t watch every second of every game and/or you don’t have total recall of every pitch with your memory, then these are invaluable. My selective memory recalls all of the bleeders and dinks that Lagares has scored hits with but a check of the batted ball exit speed shows him as the team leader. That has to mean something.
Because of this new information, my offensive opinion of Lagares is changing. A guy who consistently hits the ball as hard as Lagares is doing right now has a better chance of maintaining an elevated BABIP. Perhaps not at his current level of .388 or last year’s mark of .341 – but elevated nonetheless over an entire season.
The analytic community tried to estimate things of this nature with xBABIP, which incorporated more data into the statistic. This was a step forward from BABIP. And batted ball speeds – and the new ways this can be utilized – will push the conversation forward once again. It’s an exciting time to be a baseball fan when we are adding new ways to appreciate what we see with what goes on between the lines.
Moving back to Cuddyer and Granderson, it seems odd that people are as disappointed with their production as they are. After a poor first week, both are hitting in the general ballpark of our preseason expectations. The key should be if they can replicate their production of the last 20 games or so moving forward. If Cuddyer finishes with a .763 OPS and Granderson a .757 mark, that would make Cuddyer a disappointment to Mets fans (but within the range predicted by the computer models) and Granderson a hair above what we predicted (and further above the computer models.) Seems like a funny thing to be losing your mind about or declaring a massive problem.
But maybe there are good reasons to expect Cuddyer and/or Granderson to fall off from what they’ve done the last three weeks. What I’m certain about is that there are more tools at our disposal now to make an informed argument for whatever your position may be. My opinion is that we’re better off using these tools than dismissing them out of hand.
Granderson will be fine. Long is here. I think he will justify his contract. Cuddyer too. He’s a professional hitter. Playoffs are a definite possibility.
You can break it down whatever way you want to justify ypu opinion, that’s fine. My problem with Granderson is his contract. This team gave a relatively rich contract ($15M/Yr for 4 yrs) to a guy who’s slugging pct. has declined every year for the past four years from plus .500 to low .300. He’s being paid like a star but not producing like one. Your analysis tries to paint a positive picture using rather narrow metrics. As I said, if Grandy’s contract were more modest, it wouldn’t be such a big deal but he’s Sandy’s biggest FA signing thus far and it really hasn’t worked out. As for Cuddyer, I wasn’t a fan of the signing because of age and iinjury but time will tell.
Right, so the disappointment for both player comes in two forms.
One is the frustration of not living up to their contracts. Some fans just can’t get over a player’s price tag and can’t get past a sunk cost.
Secondly, taking out 5 games out of 26 games is significant. When people do preseason predictions, they are doing so over 100% of the games, not 80% of them. Therefore, when fans are predicting an 800 OPS and he’s only producing .695, that’s not something minor that you can just dismiss without thought.
Of course, disappointment is relative so there could be one fan who is disappointed while another is overjoyed. Disappointment is also a feeling of past events, so one could feel disappointed with the current results while also hopeful for better results in the future.
But back to your original question, i think the Mets360 predictions, which is probably a good sample of Mets fans, answers your question why fans are disappointed.
The issue is that the complaints about Cuddyer and Granderson have gotten louder over the past 10 days. But they started out in such a hole that it’s not realistic to expect them to have climbed out of it at this point of the year. Those 5-7 games are significant now because they still represent a big portion of the season. If they hit like they did the past three weeks over the next 22 weeks, it won’t matter what they hit in week 1. What they did in week 1 is the outlier. What they did in weeks 2-4 is right in line with reasonable projections. So why lose your mind over what their season totals are now?
“But they started out in such a hole that it’s not realistic to expect them to have climbed out of it at this point of the year”
Ok. But why as fans can’t we be disappointed about that right now?
“Those 5-7 games are significant now because they still represent a big portion of the season.”
So, they sucked for a big portion of the season, and we’re not supposed to be disappointed?
If they continue to hit like over the next 22 weeks, we can change our opinions, but for now, is there any reason not to be disappointed?
Fans are entitled to think and say whatever they want. Doesn’t make ’em right.
Why shouldn’t fans be disappointed right now? Because his production right now is good. If you’re complaining now – you come across as an idiot
For the first seven games of the season, Granny did not get results and earned whatever scorn came his way. And he got some, for sure. But overall he’s gotten more scorn in the last seven days and that doesn’t make sense. He’s got an .819 OPS the past seven games. Now’s a weird time to be complaining about his production.
Six months ago, the price of milk here was around $4.00 a gallon. Now it’s around $3.00 a gallon. I have no idea why that is but whatever the reason, right now is an odd time to be complaining about the price of milk.
I’m sure when most people are talking about disappointment, they are referencing the entire sample period, rather than just than just recently. A more extreme example came up in the chatter last night with Daniel Murphy, who has been a disappointment overall , but has been great recently over the past 2 weeks.
But that’s why whenever someone is doing well or poorly in the beginning we shouldn’t read too much into it because it’s a small sample size.
So even if the price just dropped from $4 to $3, you can still complain that you had to pay $4 for 6 months.
I have no doubt that your first sentence is true. But that’s the whole point of this discussion – to point out the shortcomings of that approach. I’m interested in what the player is doing now and how likely that is to continue going forward. I don’t think the first 5-7 games of the year say much at all about what Cuddyer and Granderson are going to do going forward and it’s silly to keep holding it against them. Just like I don’t think the 5-7 games that Flores was hot in mid-April tells us a lot about what he’s going to do going forward, either.
For the really important thing here – I have no idea what the price of milk is going to be tomorrow or next week. Right now I’m happy to be paying $1 less per gallon. Doesn’t quite make up for the 50 cents more a gallon I’m paying for gas than two months ago but you take the victories wherever you can find them.
I was not a fan of the Cuddyer signing.I expect him to produce at about the level he has if he doesn’t get hurt and produce even less.I figured Granderson would more or less match last year,maybe improve slightly.
While neither player has wowed me, I think if they both get hot at the same time they could carry this team for a stretch. I’m not disappointed, but considering the money involved, I’m not impressed either.
Also, great article.
The nearest comp I have for the new Curtis Granderson is Nori Aoki, who signed a one-year deal with the Giants for $4 million plus incentives ($5.5 club option, etc.).
At this point, Aoki hits for better BA and SLG. Curtis walks more.
I expected Year 4 to be poor, but I’m hoping Curtis turns it up a couple of notches. I’m not confident the power will come if he’s content to take so many early strikes.
The offense is not dependent upon either of these guys being studs, we just need a base level of functionality. A slight uptick would be nice, plus the return of Wright and d’Arnaud.
If Mets were fully healthy: Lagares, Murphy, Wright, Duda, d’Arnaud, Cuddyer, Flores, Granderson, Pitcher.
Right — .750 OPS production from the corner outfielders is what we should be expecting and what we’ve gotten after the first week of the season.
Batting Granderson lead-off in the experimental line-up remains a huge mistake. A poor 2-strike hitter in 2014 (.140 BA), he is taking even more pitches this year under the instruction, or belief, that he should walk as much as possible. A graphic on SNY last night documented that he has the lowest swing % in the NL. As a result he is seeing even more 2-strike counts and is batting .167 in them this season. He is terribly mis-cast as a lead-off batter, especially considering his $16 million salary.
Lagares on the other hand is batting .250 in two-strike counts this season —— a 26-year old with 900 MLB at-bats is batting 83 points higher this year, and batted 100 points higher last year than Granderson in two-strike counts. Not to mention batting 50 points higher overall.
So we are likely to see from Granderson a fourth straight year of significantly declining slugging percentage, since he now appears to be entrenched in the lead-off spot, content to draw as many walks as he can.
A question for Mets fans: In an AB requiring a clutch hit, would you rather see Lagares, Murphy, Duda, Cuddyer or d’Arnaud at the plate, or Granderson? Yet Granderson will get more AB’s than any of them ——- because he draws walks.
Obsessing what a hitter does with two strikes seems like a weird thing to me. But okay, I’ll play. Granderson has a .614 OPS with two strikes, the third-best mark on the team, behind only David Wright and Ruben Tejada. This is the best you can crucify him for? And it’s a mistake to bat him leadoff because he gets on base? I don’t follow that logic. You think if he batted elsewhere that his SLG would magically improve? No matter where he hits, the 40-HR seasons aren’t coming back
I have no problem seeing Granderson at the plate in a big spot. Among players not on the DL, he has the second-highest wOBA and wRC+ on the team, even with his poor start, behind only Duda.
When a poor two-strike hitter continually puts himself at a disadvantage by taking strikes, it is a cause for concern. More than half of Granderson’s ABs end with a two-strike count due to his low swing rate.
I think that if Granderson batted in the middle of the order and his mind-set was to be aggressive earlier in the count, it would improve his and the Mets offensive production. That was my understanding of why he was signed in the first place, to be a middle of the order power/RBI bat. Improving Granderson’s HR production was also touted as a reason why the Mets moved in the RF fence this year. We know Granderson can walk, however he is highly over-paid as a 100 walk, 10 HR, 50 RBI lead-off hitter.
Granderson hit his 2nd home run tonight —– on a 1st pitch fastball. It was just the fifth time in 110 plate appearances this year that his AB ended on the first pitch.
So these are the questions that really resonate with me. the big broad metrics, have no capacity to predict the outcome of a situation, because the situations and the level of their seriousness change. Take wRC+, a metric that compares run production against league average with ballpark adjustments. In my opinion, that provides nearly zero guidance about how any batter will do in a particular situation. The extension of the meaning is that because the player is more productive than league average (a number that itself likely has little meaning because it expresses no value for standard deviation) possible an RBI is coming. But each individual pitch is an entity unto itself, with lots of moving variables, like where defense repositions between pitches, something weve seen in shifts against us, where the infield is set at 0 out vs 2 outs. As a result I am becoming more and more interested in situational analysis, and believe there is a higher math out there that looks very different from what we see in what appear to be “objective” metrics.
My hunch is that the micro level that you’re interested in won’t be predictive in the vast majority of cases.
I’m disappointed with the offense in general over this bad stretch. But, as others have pointed out, that disappointment may stem from unrealistic expectations.
Then again, a bad stretch is a bad stretch. Probably shouldn’t put too much stock into it, just like we needed to temper the excitement just a tad with the winning streak.
In terms of “disappointment”, I have not had expectations for Grandy to do much. He was, in 2014, worse than I thought he would be. Remove that one streak and he Jason Bay’d it.
Cuddyer: he is 36 and injury prone, so my expectations were not high. He has hit the ball well, and he, himself, said, the averages will pick up again.
I have been negative on Grandy, as readers here know, and was so surprised at Spring training that I thought that the new hitting coach turned things around, and couldn’t wait to see what the new dimension in right would mean.
Ugh.
Knock, knock, knockin’ on Conforto’s door?
OK, if I remove the one streak, Granderson has a .760 OPS. That one streak being his terrible April.
Check what Conforto has been doing lately — a .633 OPS in his last 15 games heading into Wed. night. We need to cool it on the promotion talks.
A healthy Wright takes pressure off both and provides lineup protection.
The Mets signed Granderson with the expectation that he would produce a 3.0 WAR for 4 seasons. He failed last year so of course the projections are down going into this year. I don’t like him leading off but they are winning. So what do I know? He belongs two positions behind Duda in the batting order. If the Mets were looking for a leadoff type RF then they should have signed Aoki for a lot less. Yes, i am dissappointed in Ganderson and in TC for using him this way.
Cuddyer is what he is, a RHB that was better than CY and EY. He is a transition piece that started off slow. Both corners are not earning their salary
That said, the Mets are in first place so the chemistry is better than the statistics and I’ll continue to be ecstatic about the teams good start.
I don’t pretend to know what the Mets expected from Granny.
But if they were expecting him to deliver 12 WAR over the life of the contract – regardless of the shape – I think that was extremely optimistic. They were paying for his decline years (33-36), he was coming off an injury and in his last full season he had a 2.7 fWAR.
My opinion is that 9 fWAR would have been about the top of the reasonable expectation range. FG valued a unit of WAR on the free agent market at around $7.5 million last year, so it’s far from certain that Granny isn’t earning his contract.