Welcome to the start of our projection review series. We start off with free agent acquisition Curtis Granderson. Take a few moments to see the original piece we did. Our group projection was for the following line:
PA – 607
AVG – .243
OBP – .325
SLG – .465
HR – 25
RBI – 82
OPS vs. LHP – .700
Here’s how Granderson actually did, with the best and worst individual projections among our group.
PA – 654
Best – McCarthy (656), Schubert (652)
Worst – Kolton (517)
AVG – .227
Best – Koehler (.235)
Worst – Kolton (.267)
OBP – .326
Best – Joura, Schubert (.325)
Worst – Kolton (.296)
SLG – .388
Best – Joura (.420)
Worst – Stack (.475)
HR – 20
Best – Vasile (21)
Worst – Rogan (31)
RBIs – 66
Best – Vasile (68)
Worst – Ferguson (90)
OPS vs. LHP – .742
Best – Walendin (.751)
Worst – Kolton (.633)
For a guy coming off an injury and changing leagues, our official prediction wasn’t too bad. We pretty much nailed his OBP and did better than the projection systems forecasting his playing time. Additionally, we were in the right ballpark when it came to his AVG and HR.
But we fell down with his slugging and to a lesser extent his RBIs and how he would perform against LHP. When the best individual projection missed his slugging by 32 points, that’s not good. At least with the RBIs we can point to Joe as having been right on target with his forecast. And we’re all grateful that he performed better than expected versus southpaws.
It will be curious to see how we project Granderson next go-round, after getting the chance to watch him up close and personal this past season. It was such an up-and-down year for him overall and both the pessimists and optimists will have a strong case to make.
Dan Kolton contributed to this piece.
The RBI’s was his biggest failure. He was suppose to be the clean up hitter, he was awful. Not a good situational hitter either. He found his spot in the batting order hitting 6th or 7th. He strike out to much to hit leadoff or second. The Mets and Met fans (me included) expected to much from him, but his history was there for all of us to see, and we ignored it. He performed how he realistically should have performed. He had a big disadvantage for a home field, which was not designed for him, like Yankee Stadium was. At any rate he’s going to be here for the next three years. I have been on his case the last three month, which wasn’t totally fair. He is a better than average overall ball player, but far from the “all star” type player we expected to get from the Free Agent market. He didn’t really decline like David Wright. He just had a slightly below average season, if you look at his history. He was never really an “all star type player,” as the Mets promoted him to be. Moving in the the fences, will probably help him hit the five homers he was short on your prediction. But Met management has to realize he is not a front of the order, or middle of the order type of hitter. They should also move him to left field, his arm is to weak for Right field.. .
Curtis is not a clean up hitter. It was wrong of the Mets to think he could fill that role. He’s a #1 or #2 hitter if he has good protection (his days with the Yankees attest to that) or he has to slide down to #6 or #7. He hit three balls that were caught at the wall in Citifield in the first three games of 2014 and I think he then tried to hit the ball harder for the next few months with horrible results. He got his groove back in June/July and I suspect starting again trying to hit HR’s again and slumped once again before picking it back up in Sept by hitting more to all fields and also against a lot of AAAA pitching. Lets hope he’s gotten hitting for HR’s out of his system and he goes back to being a line drive hitter and he will be great in this lineup with his OBP ability (OBP 100 points higher than BA)
They need to add talent and have willingness to employ some platoon shifts for guys like Grandy and Duda as the actual experience dictates during next season.
Granderson performed better vs LHP than he did against RHP
My starting point with him is that there is going to be a recovery toward decent production. His stats versus lefties were better than his versus righties stats— and also versus his lifetime performance.
I suspect that he has always tried to “do less” versus lefties…and that he tried to “do less” generally as the year went along. For his “versus lefties approach”, that was probably a small and productive tweak—I don’;t think he ever found his comfort versus righties, the side where he had always felt like himself.
I’m anticipating 25/80-90 next year…. if he’s a 5/6 hitter. He’ll be ok.
It seemed to me that RHP generally pounded Granderson on the inside part of the plate while LHP attacked him away. He seemed to strike out more versus lefties but when he hit the ball, he had much better success.
Granderson was a disappointment this year and fell short of a very fair projection by the staff. He is one of the reasons the Mets didn’t reach .500 this year. Two months, or 33% of the season, he was awful and the other 67% of the time he was everything that the Mets wanted and expected. He didn’t earn his salary this year even though he was second on the team in home runs. He ended the season with a 105 OPS+ which incidentally was the same OPS+ that Jason Bay produced in his first year as a Met. (shudder) He is a very comfortable fit in the sixth spot in the order but not so good at the lead off spot where he averaged .289 OBP and hit 7 home runs. Those home runs may have produced more runs in the 5th or 6th hole for a run starved team. I think TC needs to take some of the blame in his handling of Granderson in the batting order.
I’ve always thought of the Granderson signing as similar to Washington’s signing of Werth (I like Werth better as a Player). Plus Plus Pros who could provide some production and gravity in a developing mix.
Werth’s first year in Washington looked pretty bad
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/w/werthja01.shtml?redir
I’m hoping for a similar direction of improvement.