Curtis Granderson and Bryce Harper are the starting right fielders for the top two teams in the National League East. After that, it becomes a lot harder to compare them. Harper seemingly gets better all of the time and is a youngster who’s in the conversation for best player in the game. Granderson is on the downward slope and while he’s had a career that 95% of the people in the game would envy, he’s just not the same caliber of player as Harper.
But both players have something in common besides their position. Both players have had a tough time of it since the end of April.
Now, some might argue that Granderson has simply had a rough time all season. But after the game on April 26th, Granderson had hit safely in 12 of his previous 13 contests and carried an .852 OPS overall. For the third straight year, he didn’t hit the first week of the season. But just like in 2015, Granderson started hitting and it looked like déjà vu all over again.
But unlike 2015, the hits didn’t keep rolling in. From April 27th on, Granderson has a .161/.250/.323 line in 104 PA. Yes, a lot of that is BABIP luck, as he has just a .180 mark in this stretch. But there are two other factors in play helping to cause this skid. He’s not walking at quite the pace he was a year ago and his strikeouts have been higher than normal. He’s striking out 26.9% of the time in this recent stretch.
Meanwhile, Harper had a 1.274 OPS thru games of April 26. But from the 27th to May 24th, he had a .176 AVG and a .270 SLG mark. His OPS was significantly better than Granderson’s, as teams had been walking Harper like no one since Barry Bonds. But he was hitting the ball no better than Granderson in this near-month period.
In the rubber game of the last Mets-Nats series, Dusty Baker gave Harper the day off while Terry Collins wrote Granderson’s name in the lineup.
Now, you may think that Baker did this because the Mets had lefty Steven Matz going. But Harper has been playing regularly against lefties and his AVG/SLG marks this year are virtually identical in the lefty/righty split. Instead, Baker said he was giving Harper a “mental day off.” Harper did enter the game as a pinch-hitter, in the eighth inning against Matz. He grounded out to end the inning.
Meanwhile, Granderson was in the lineup for the ninth straight day. Since April 27, Granderson has played in 26 of the team’s 27 games, although three of those were pinch-hitting appearances. Collins has given him some days out of the starting lineup when a lefty is on the mound. But he started Monday when Gio Gonzalez was on the mound. With the Mets struggling for offense, Collins opted not to rest a slumping Granderson when the opposing team threw a righty.
Earlier, I suggested that Collins could find some extra playing time for Alejandro De Aza by giving a day off to Granderson or Michael Conforto when either player was struggling, regardless if there was a righty on the mound. Wednesday would have been a perfect time to get De Aza a spot start and give Granderson a “mental health day.”
Perhaps Collins figured with Thursday’s regularly scheduled off day that Granderson wouldn’t need any extra down time. He ended up going hitless in four at-bats.
Granderson has played 155 and 157 games in his first two seasons with the Mets. Since 2006, Granderson has topped 150 games seven times. No one doubts that he’s a gamer. But he’s also 35 years old and it’s time to stop treating him like he was 10 years younger.
Hope everyone has a good Memorial Day holiday. As you’re enjoying time off from school or work, remember that days off are good things, even for professional athletes.
correct!!!!!….and he needs to force ab’s to Lagares to make him a more effective spot starter and pich hitter. It’;s not just about resting Grandy
Yes, agreed. Old player, long season. However, I’d rest him against LHP, not RHP.
Any comparison between Harper and “the Grandyman” is totally ridiculous, absurd, and what every adjective you can add in. But your on point about sitting him down for a game or two when he’s slumping and give De Aza more playing time.
There are two separate issues here that you are conflating. Sticking with Curtis:
1) Rest. Okay, yes, certainly. Against LHP he has an OBP of .240; against RHP, it is .317. That difference is consistent with his career number. So by all means, rest him vs LHP.
2) The notion of giving De Aza a chance. That’s sweet, but pointless. Those ABs should go to Lagares, who performs well against LHP.
De Aza was a horrible, absurd, wasteful signing. Taking out Granderson against RHP just to give De Aza a try only weakens the team.
Sandy is an okay GM. But not a perfect one. In July, he wanted to trade for Jay Bruce, which would have effectively put Conforto on the bench. Fortunately the Reds are idiots. This winter, he favored Zobrist over Murphy, which would have blocked Herrera and precluded a Cespedes signing. De Aza falls into that category. Nobody’s perfect. Every GM makes mistakes. There’s no reason to make it worse by playing the guy.
That said, if De Aza could play 1b — which I very much doubt — I think he’d be an interesting platoon option.
1. You only want to rest him against LHP. I don’t agree with that. He needs a day off when he needs a day off and he would have benefited from one Thursday. LHP are not evenly distributed and if you’re only going to rest him the times the Mets face lefties you’re making a sub-optimal decision.
2. De Aza is the beneficiary of these assorted days off. The entire idea is to benefit Granderson. If you think I’m proposing this to be “sweet” to De Aza, you are completely mistaken. Give the ABs to Lagares if that makes you happy. Just give the old man regular days off.
You stopped numbering but I’m going to pretend you didn’t.
3. I wish we could go back in time and have signed Cespedes to the contract we did at the end of the World Series. But it didn’t work that way. Sorry, that’s reality. And for better or worse, Alderson felt Lagares needed a platoon partner. And the best option who was willing to sign a one-year deal was De Aza. If Sandy had signed someone else to a multi-year deal then we likely don’t have Cespedes. Cespedes + De Aza is better than any other situation we could have wound up with this offseason. You act like these moves were made in a vacuum, that we could have one without the other. Alderson gambled on no CF backup last year and it blew up in his face. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. He didn’t view Kirk as an answer. He got a one-year bridge, with the idea that Lagares might rebound or that Nimmo might develop or hey, if all the planets align, we might get Cespedes on a short-term deal. You harp on the 49 miserable PA that De Aza has given the team this year, like it’s a giant failing of the GM. I focus that he put himself in a position to get the guy with the 1.038 OPS, covered himself if that scenario didn’t unfold and didn’t block a top prospect.
4. Sandy made the moves that turned the team from one that posted 79 wins the year before he arrived, the one that had a farm system that BA ranked as the 20th-best in the game into a World Series team in five years. Sorry, he’s better than just “okay.” He had assets and he had handicaps. He made good moves and he made bad moves. The end result is a team that’s experienced post-season success and is positioned to continue that success in the immediate term. Do you really think there are double-digit GMs who could have done what Alderson did, in the situation that Alderson was in? The Mets were fortunate to have him guide this makeover.
Point 3 is a perfect summation of the DeAza signing.
Juan Lagares has a career split against LHP .746 OPS. Granderson, although having a career split of .694 OPS vs LHP, has fallen off vs LHP in the last year by only posting a .558 OPS in 2015 and a .623 OPS in 2016. Granderson does not deserve this much playing time, especially when there is a capable 4th outfielder available in Lagares. Conforto is also not hitting LHP with a .355 OPS in a small sample size of 46 plate appearences. Granderson and Conforto should be splitting the “rest” time during the approximate 32 times a LHP starts against the Mets and Lagares should be starting.
I could never agree with Baker resting Harper in a crucial series between the first and second place team That “rest” should have been planned against another team. A manager needs to go with his best in those situations. I would be upset with TC if he were to sit Cespedes under similar circumstances.