Flores GrandersonJosh Collmenter came into Sunday’s game with a 5.03 ERA and an .843 OPS allowed, having surrendered nine homers in 62.2 IP. Those numbers got worse after the Mets drilled four homers and scored five runs against him in six innings. The Mets did what they were supposed to do – take advantage of a pitcher without overwhelming stuff.

The homers were hit by Curtis Granderson (2), Wilmer Flores and Eric Campbell. Flores shares the team lead with nine homers. Granderson is one off the pace with eight. Let’s take a look at these two power hitters to see how they are getting it done.

Baseball-Reference divides pitchers into Power, Finesse and Average, based on their strikeout and walk rates. Flores has hit all nine of his homers against average (5) and finesse (4) pitchers. Granderson has hit all eight of his homers against power (2) and finesse (6) pitchers. Here’s how these two hitters fare against the three categories of pitchers:

Power
CG – .313/.500/.563 – best OPS among nine Mets with at least 20 PA
WF – .233/.261/.279 – seventh-best OPS among the nine Mets in this category

Average
CG – .187/.274/.213 – ranks last in OPS among 10 Mets with at least 30 PA
WF – .277/.319/.538 – ranks second in OPS among the 10 Mets in this category

Finesse
CG – .250/.333/.478 – ranks third in OPS among nine Mets with at least 40 PA
WF – .235/.244/.407 – eighth-best OPS among the nine Mets in this category.

Overall, Granderson and Flores are oddly complementary players. Granderson succeeds against the extreme pitchers, while Flores does his best against ones that are middle of the road. Additionally, while he struggles overall against finesse pitchers, Flores has a healthy .172 ISO against them. Contrast that to his performance against the power pitchers, against whom he has just a .046 ISO.

Now, let’s take a look at the hot zones for both of these guys. First up is Granderson.

Granderson

These are from the catcher’s perspective, so the .522 SLG mark is in pitches in the strike zone low and away to the lefty Granderson. Conventional wisdom says that lefties like the ball low and in but we see that’s not true with Granderson. Instead, we see pitchers now consistently trying to attack Granderson inside. Like most hitters, he cleans up on middle-middle pitches and he does his best on low-middle and low-and-away offerings. It’s one of the reasons he does well against southpaws, his ability to hit the ball moving away from him.

Now for Flores.

Flores

Just yesterday, Gary Cohen talked about low and in being Flores’ power spot and here’s visual representation. If you’re going to attack Flores low and inside, you better miss the strike zone or else he’s likely to crush it. It’s also easy to see why power pitchers have such success against him. He’s extremely vulnerable with high pitches and also low and away strikes. Pitchers who can hit those areas consistently will have success against him.

It’s weird to see a righty batter clean up on pitches low and inside but that’s exactly what we have with Flores. It’s equally unusual to see a hitter succeed against extreme power and finesse pitchers yet struggle so with more neutral hurlers. Perhaps the issue is that Granderson knows what to expect with the extreme pitchers but isn’t so sure what the average pitchers are going to do to attack him. Whatever the reason, it’s nice to have a guy so successful against power pitchers. Also, instead of resting Granderson when a lefty is on the mound, perhaps he could get a day off against an “average” pitcher.

This also suggests another area where the Mets might exploit to get the most out of the shortstop position. While Flores does his worst against power pitchers, Ruben Tejada does his best. He currently sits with a .910 OPS against power pitchers this season in an extremely limited sample but in his MLB career, he has a .684 OPS against power pitchers, his best mark in any of the three categories and 144 points higher than what Flores is doing this year.

11 comments on “The complementary Wilmer Flores and Curtis Granderson

  • Chris F

    Fascinating.

  • Matt Netter

    Nice nugget you found, Brian. I hope TC reads your blog

    • Joe Vasile

      Haha, if TC reads this site, we’ve all been giving him a lot of advice over the years

  • Chris B

    Great article, Brian. These are fascinating and valuable pieces of information. Just curious, what was your inspiration behind doing all this research and writing this particular piece?

    • Brian Joura

      Thanks Chris!

      We know Collmenter is not a very good pitcher and the Mets knocked him around. So, I was curious to see if anyone on the Mets consistently hit good pitching and it kind of jumped off from there.

  • James Preller

    This does nothing for me. Classic overthink. Flores is a young, inexperienced, developing hitter under tremendous scrutiny, playing out of position in his first full MLB season. You can dice and slice the stats any way you want, but they will not tell us anything about the future. You are once again making too much of a small sample size, finding meaning where there is none. That’s my opinion anyway. All said with respect!

    • Brian Joura

      Wilmer Flores has been paid to play 587 games at shortstop. Who knows how many more games he played at the position as an amateur. This is not someone learning a new position on the fly.

  • Michael Geus

    The good news so far with Flores is that he has shown the ability to hit home runs. The bad news is that is it. His OBP is brutal.

    Offensively unless there is significant improvement I can’t see him as anything other than a middle infielder or utility player on a good team. And defensively we can eliminate shortstop (as a starter, some games here and there would be fine).

    Flores future seems tied to Herrara, as only one second baseman can play at a time. Unless Flores stays at short, which makes no sense to me, but it hasn’t all along and there he still is.

    Figuring out a logical spot for a guy with this organization is tough, as logic is not how things get decided. The order seems to be:

    A. Money
    B: Least effort involved

    When I apply those factors, I end up with Flores at short for a few more years. He will still be cheap, and requires no effort for Alderson as he is already on the 40 man roster.

  • DED

    Woodie Held. Flores is the reincarnation, tarnation, of Woodie Held, minus the pale skin and the chaw in his jaw. A decent bat with pretty good power, but no real defensive position; sound like anybody you know?

    Actually Held walked a bit more than Flores does, but I hold out hopes for Wilmer in that regard.

    • Brian Joura

      Held consistently had double digit BB% (10.9 lifetime rate) while Flores checks in this year with a 2.5 rate.

      I’m not going to say that no one in history ever quadrupled their walk rate but if they held a reunion of all the people who did it, it wouldn’t have to be in a room much bigger than a VW Beetle.

    • norme

      DED,
      I remember Held.
      His greatest asset was a very strong throwing arm. As I recall (trickier as I get older), they tried him at SS and in CF but he never put it together to become a star.

Leave a Reply

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

The maximum upload file size: 100 MB. You can upload: image, audio, video, document, spreadsheet, interactive, text, archive, code, other. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop file here