Curtis Granderson’s 2015 season and some age-based comps

Curtis Granderson’s first year with the Mets in 2014 didn’t exactly go as planned and most people considered him to be a bust. Those people failed to take into account that after a dreadful April, Granderson was actually pretty solid in 2014, putting up a .760 OPS over the season’s final five months (551 PA) and this despite a .278 BABIP. Still, given his age, it was hard to expect the season he put up in 2015.

Once again, Granderson got off to a slow start but instead of it lasting an entire month, the 2015 bad stretch lasted only a week. Sure, his final April numbers — .231/.362/.321 were nothing to get excited about but from April 14 to the end of the month he had a .758 OPS over 67 PA. That’s night and day compared to his April 2014 production, when he could only muster a .468 OPS in the season’s opening month.

His end of year numbers checked in at .259/.364/.457 over 682 PA. And he was arguably the team’s best hitter in the postseason, something that must have come as a shock to Yankees fans who watched him go 3-30 the last time he was in the playoffs back in 2012. Granderson went 15-53 and posted a .283/.375/.491 line over all three playoff series in 2015.

It’s hard to remember sometimes that Granderson did this at age 34, when ballplayers are typically in the decline portion of their career. But Granderson’s career has been anything but typical and there’s a chance that he may be one of the rare guys who puts up better numbers in his 30s than he did in his 20s. Let’s look at Granderson’s age split, using OPS+ since he’s played for three different teams and his career spanned the Silly Ball era to today’s more pitcher-friendly environment.

20s – 113 OPS+ in 3,424 PA
30s – 121 OPS+ in 2,956 PA

He’s got nearly a season’s worth of extra PA under his belt in his 20s but, barring injury, he’ll pass that total in 2016 and it’s difficult to imagine him losing eight points of OPS+ off his 30s career total next year.

The one-two combo of playing in 157 games last year and batting leadoff in 140 of them led to 682 PA, the most he’s tallied in a season since 2011 (684) and the fourth-most he’s posted in his 12-year career. How rare is it for someone of Granderson’s age to post that many PA in a season? Since 2000, only 61 players in their age 34 season topped 600 PA and Granderson’s 682 rank 14th on the list.

If we move the cutoff date to 2010, he ranks fifth. Granderson was one of four guys to turn the trick in 2015, pacing the group that included Jose Bautista (666), Nelson Cruz (655) and Brandon Phillips (623). The 2014 group was made up of Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday and Ryan Howard and none of that trio saw a significant decline in 2015, although two of them did take a step backwards, OPS+-wise.

Pujols went from a 126 OPS+ to a 118 mark in 2015. Holliday went from 127 to 120 and Howard went from a 92 to a 94.

Hopefully, no one declares the 129 OPS+ that Granderson produced in 2015 to be the baseline of success for 2016. But given the experiences of Pujols and Holliday last year, it might be reasonable for Granderson to post his 30s average of a 121 OPS+. But let’s expand our comparison group past two players.

Using the list of 61 guys since the year 2000, let’s take those that had an OPS+ from 124 to 134. This gives us seven more players, bringing our comparison group to nine. Here’s how those seven guys did in OPS+ in their age 35 season:

Michael Young – 80
Torii Hunter – 116
Magglio Ordonez – 111
Jermaine Dye – 102
Raul Ibanez – 121
Carlos Delgado – 102
Luis Gonzalez – 134

We’re all over the map here. The good news is that there was only one person who fell apart. Young’s 125 OPS+ in his age 34 season was compiled in no small part due to a career-high .367 BABIP. At age 35, that number fell to .299, his lowest mark since his rookie season in 2001. Young had a lifetime .333 BABIP, exactly halfway between the marks he posted in his age 34 and age 35 seasons.

Dye didn’t have the BABIP drop that Young did, but he saw a significant decrease in his power. He went from 77 extra-base hits in his age 34 season to 47 the following year. Delgado’s age 35 season was the worst in his career but he rebounded in 2008 to put up a season just as good as 2006, one which had the fans briefly chanting MVP! when he came to the plate.

Ordonez, like Dye, suffered from a power outage in his age 35 season, going from a .176 ISO to a .118 mark, the lowest of his 15-year career. Hunter’s three-best years came in 2009, 2010 and 2012. His age 35 season in 2011, he posted a 116 OPS+, six points above his lifetime mark in the category. Ibanez lost some homers in his age 35 season but otherwise was just as good as the year before.

That brings us to Gonzalez, the only player in our group to see his OPS+ go up in his age 35 season. Gonzalez put a few more balls in play and had slightly better luck with his average once doing so. But the real reason for the increase was that he upped his doubles total from 19 in his age 34 season to 46 the following year.

Circling back to Granderson, we see he upped his BABIP 40 points in 2015. But that had more to do with a poor year in the category his first season with the Mets, as his .305 mark last year is just four points above his lifetime mark. His .198 ISO was also an improvement over 2014 but still 20 points below his lifetime mark in the category.

There’s no major red flag to expect Granderson to crater in his age 35 season. But eight of our nine comparison guys saw a decrease in their OPS+, so that should be our default assumption. While Granderson will have trouble matching or bettering his 2015 mark, the good news is he can fall from his marks from last year and still be a valuable player.