And if you don’t know, now you know! Photo courtesy of AP and daylife.com
As the buzz from the 2009 World Series wore off and Yankee fans began to look to the next season of baseball, Ninja-in-Chief and General Manager Brian Cashman struck with precision and speed and dealt longtime Yankee prospects CF Austin Jackson and RHP Ian Kennedy, along with LHP reliever Phil Coke to the Arizona Diamondbacks and Detroit Tigers as a part of a three-way deal that brought CF Curtis Granderson to the Yankees. After watching Melky Cabrera hack his way through a full season and without knowing what to expect from Brett Gardner, most fans rejoiced. The Yankees were getting a real life centerfielder! And not an old one! And he wasn’t just a good arm in the outfield, he could actually get hits!
In four full seasons with the Tigers, Granderson averaged 23.5 home runs per year and was the owner of a .273/.346/.484 batting line over that time. However, his career had been something of a rollercoaster. His 2009 campaign with Detroit had been something of a disappointment. 2007 was the high-water mark, as a .360 BABIP led him to a .302/.360/.552 line and his single-season 14.3 UZR combined to make him worth 7.4 fWAR on the year. The next year was a bit of a downer, and as his BABIP dropped some 45 points his batting line fell to .280/.365/.494. Oddly, his UZR swung wildly to -11.3, providing yet another good example of the vagaries of single-season UZR (and, by extension, WAR). His next season with Detroit would prove to be his worst and his last. His BABIP fell another 40 points and his line dropped down to .249/.327/.453. For a guy who had gotten on base at a 36% clip in the past, this was a fairly decent sized drop off. The odd part was that Granderson wasn’t past the aging curve. 28 years old is well within the range of the peak level of physical performance for position players, so it wasn’t as if he was simply slowing down. On the other hand, Granderson had always been a player with a very high strike out rate (24% on his career), and his on-base percentage had seemingly been fueled by a high BABIP throughout his career, rather than by taking plenty of walks (BB% only 9.5%). Despite that, some looked at his batted ball data and concluded that Granderson was due for a rebound in 2010. After all, his line-drive percentage had stayed relatively static. He had even dropped his ground ball percentage in 2009, upping his fly-ball percentage, and despite the fact that his IFFB percentage had increased it seemed to the naked eye that Granderson would be a good bet to bounce back to something like .275/.355/.470. Of course, there were troubling signs as well. Granderson has always hit righties better than lefties, but he fared particularly awfully against lefties in 2009 with a .484 OPS. He was a question mark, but a player with considerable upside.
As the 2010 season got underway, it seemed that 2010 was going to look more like 2009 than 2008 or 2007. Things were not going well for Granderson. In the first month of the year he put up a line of .225/.311/.375 with only 2 home runs. Of course, the sample size was small and so when Granderson went down with a groin injury on May 1st fans were still hopeful that the Granderson bounceback year would get underway when he returned. Nearly four weeks later he came back and the early results were good. In a homestand against the Indians and the Orioles he posted an OPS of 1.190 and homered once. He was never able to find a consistent rhythm, though, and when he headed into the All-Star Break his post-injury line stood at .248/.308/.428, leaving him with a first half line of .240/.309/.409. Meanwhile, Austin Jackson had gotten off to a scorching hot start with the Tigers, cruising to a .300/.354/.403 line fueled mostly by good fortune on balls in play. Meanwhile in Arizona Ian Kennedy had already thrown 111.1 innings of 4.12 ERA ball with a K/9 of 8.08 and a K/BB ratio of 2.38. Had the Yankees made a big mistake?
The first part of the second half offered no relief. Up to and including the Boston series on August 7-9, Granderson hit a meager .240/.301/.440, an improvement in power but very unimpressive overall for someone making X dollars. At that point, Granderson approached Kevin Long and asked for help with his swing. As the Yankees traveled to Texas for a two-game series starting on Monday, Granderson got some time off. He appeared in both games as a pinch-runner, but spent most of the games on the bench and working with Long to try to regain some of his past success. When he returned, Mike Axisa of River Ave Blues noted that Granderson had made a few very slight alterations to his stance: lowering his hands and removing some of the extraneous movement.
Whether it was that or some magic pixie dust that Long sprinkled over Granderson, it worked. It worked so well that Granderson went on a tear. It worked so well that Axisa created the Twitter hashtag #cured to refer to every Granderson success. It worked so well that in the 179 PAs Granderson has had since his little Kevin Long siesta he’s hitting .275/.362/.588 with, wait for it, 14 home runs. It’s been an astoundingly hot 45 game stretch for Granderson, and he’s raised his season line all the way up to .249/.325/.470 with a wOBA of .348, which is higher than his .340 mark in 2009.
Granderson was one of the biggest acquisitions the Yankees made this offseason, but the Yankees have relied on players other than him in 2010. The batting order is littered with guys who get on-base and hit with power like it’s going out of style: Berkman, Swisher, Teixeira, Cano, Rodriguez and Posada. There’s the familiar Jeter at the top of the order and the speedy OBP-machine and P/PA monster Gardner at the bottom. But nestled in there in the seven or eight hole in the linup is Curtis Granderson. He’s heating up and turning into a very valuable weapon, one with the potential to do serious damage to opposing pitchers in this year’s playoffs. It’s a no-brainer to name him my playoff sleeper.
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17 Responses to Cured: The Curtis Granderson Story
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TIQ IQ
Tough to call the trade a success unless he has a huge October. Also be a little hesitant to say he’s cure from a month of at bats. He is what he is. A low OBP-high power CF.
Still think he’s on the trade block in the off season so they can put Gardner in CF and Crawford in LF.
I didn’t call the trade a success, I said that it looks better now than it did when he was struggling. That’s beyond dispute, and I haven’t even gone into Jackson’s regression. And prior to his little Long rendezvous, he wasn’t a low OBP, high power CF, he was a low OBP, low power CF.
That said, trading Granderson and finding budget money for Crawford is going to be a lot more difficult than you think.
How can you say the trade is a success or not a success yet? It hasn’t even been a full year let alone multiple years to see what happens to all parties involved over the long hall.
I don’t think the Yankees will have any motivation to trade Curtis nor do I think they will have much motivation to go after an overpaid left fielder who will probably regress more from age than a lot of players due to his complete and utter reliance on his speed. The Yankees seem to be completely in love with the idea of reuniting CC and Cliff this time under pin stripes and I really don’t see any other team standing a chance in that race with the Boston rotation slam full of overpaid pitchers, the likelihood of adding both Lee and Crawford is very small and I don’t see them even entertaining the thought of such a move.
As for Granderson I expect him to have a better year next year than he has this year and I expect it to be a 30 HR year for sure, he has looked tons better since sitting out and working with Long on his swing and even on outs he has made more solid consistent contact and the same can be said for left handed pitching as well. He isn’t Joe D or Mickey Mantle but he is a guy who I think will be much better going forward the rest of his Yankee years than he was this one.
I really don’t see the value in trading Granderson’s fairly cheap contract just to sign Crawford to a 140+ million dollar contract especially when our biggest need this offseason is starting pitching whether or not Andy comes back.
An outfield of Crawford, Gardner and Superman won’t help if out rotation is Sabathia, Hughes, Burnett, Nova and Joba/Noesi.
Quick question, who is this directed to: “How can you say the trade is a success or not a success yet? It hasn’t even been a full year let alone multiple years to see what happens to all parties involved over the long hall.” , me?
As for the rest of your analysis, I think that’s spot-on.
Austin Jackson has a much better BA than Granderson, much better OBP, and far more stolen bases. In fact, Jackson’s performance is excellent for a rookie. The Yankees made a big mistake with the trade for Granderson, and despite Granderson’s better power numbers, Jackson has been the better player this year, even though it is only his first year at the major league level.
Jackson had a very nice rookie season. He plays a good center field and seems to run the bases pretty well. As for his hitting, however, his power isn’t developing all that well and his BABIP (.403 this year) seems awfully high and due for regression. In order to keep hitting .300 (and OBPing .350), he’ll have to turn a lot of those strikeouts into hits or walks, which I’m not sure will happen. A nice player, but I wouldn’t call trading him away a big mistake.
Oops.. “bornwithawaygrays” was definitely not supposed to write that. That was authored by me, “Damian”.
It should be pointed out that Johnny Damon did not have a season as good as Jackson’s until at least his 3rd full season with the Royals and Granderson achieved success with the Tigers at a slower pace than Jackson.
No it shouldn’t, because this article was not about how Austin Jackson has done this year and what we can expect for the course of his career, it was about Granderson’s mechanical changes and his recent surge. If I wanted to write an Austin Jackson piece, I’d do more than mention him in passing.
People should stop being dismissive of Austin Jackson’s performance this season due to his having a high BABIP. Luck always has been and always will be a major element of success for hitters. A player achieving a .300 BA in a season should be celebrated for what it is- a very good accomplishment, especially for a rookie. I am sure that at least some of Ichiro Suzuki and Derek Jeter’s great BA seasons can be attributed in part to their having high BABIPs. Do people want to revisit great BA performances in baseball history and question their merit if the players had high BABIPs?
Wow, that’s a total red herring. For one, this post is not about Austin Jackson. Why you and others are obsessed with talking about Austin Jackson is beyond me, but you obviously don’t get the point. When discussing Jackson’s unsustainable, ridiculously high BABIP (over .400) the goal is not to “dismiss” his performance this season. The goal is to discuss the probability that he replicates the results in 2011. But hey, if you think Austin Jackson is a hitter on the order of Josh Hamilton or Ichiro, then more power to you.
Eric, you criticized the Granderson trade on account of Jackson’s better batting average and OBP. A .300 average is a nice accomplishment, especially for a rookie, and no one here has said otherwise. However, consider this. Derek Jeter’s career BABIP is .356, and he’s never eclipsed .400 over the course of a full season and has only come within .010 of that number twice in his career. So luck has played a role in various seasons in Jeter’s career, but his .356 career line is the result of skill, not luck. What should we expect Jackson’s future BABIP to be? I don’t know, but not .400, right?
The problem is that you concluded (and sounded pretty sure of yourself) that the Yankees made a big mistake trading Jackson, and backed up that conclusion with his BA and OBP, which I think you would agree are inflated a considerable amount by the luck Jackson has had on his balls in play this year. You can’t blame the Yankees for not anticipating Jackson’s extraordinarily good luck. That’s all.
I don’t think and I have never implied that Jackson is as good as Hamilton or Suzuki. I think that people (not necessarily you) are being far too dismissive of Jackson’s performance this season. I think that with time (perhaps beginning in 2012), Jackson, who is currently only 23 years old, could easily put in a performance every year around .300/.370/.440 10 home runs/15 triples/30+ doubles/ 30+ stolen bases, while providing good defense in CF.
I agree that Jackson has been lucky this season, but I think he has still demonstrated very nice potential for a good career.
That’s fine, no one can fault you for that opinion. I think the Yankees made a gamble to trade Jackson’s long-term potential for Granderson’s immediate, in-his-prime production, but Jackson certainly had a good debut. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some regression in 2011, though.
Grandy should give Long a bonus of 50k,
Ha, be a nice and generous move! More likely, the Yanks and others will pay him well to keep him: Grandy, Swish, Robbie, Jete and Alex are all known to have benefited from his stance suggestions and tactical philosophies.