Granderson’s Odd Season

Curtis Granderson hit a pair of home runs last night, giving him 16 on the season. That’s the same amount of home runs as Prince Fielder and Justin Morneau have. He’s seven bombs away from tying his career high for long balls in a season, and we’re not even to July yet.

The home runs have come at the expense of his doubles and triples. He has just nine non-HR extra base hits, compared to 39 last year and 61 (!) the year before. Usually, when you see an uptick in home runs accompanied by a significant decline in doubles and triples, you can see a big spike in HR/FB rate that explains the differences. However, here’s Granderson’s HR/FB rates by year:

2006: 11.7%
2007: 10.9%
2008: 12.3%
2009: 14.8%

Yea, 15% is a little higher than 12%, but this isn’t an increase of the magnitude that I was expecting. I was thinking something more along the lines of Raul Ibanez, who had a 10.7% HR/FB rate last and is at 25.3% this year. Granderson has just seen a modest change rather than a dramatic one, at least in terms of how far his fly balls are traveling.

No, the interesting change with Granderson isn’t in the distance of his fly balls, but instead the quantity. He’s basically stopped hitting the ball on the ground, posting a 28.2% GB% that is the sixth lowest in baseball. The change in the loft of his swing has led to significantly more balls in the air.

It hasn’t necessarily made him a better hitter overall, though. After posting a .374 wOBA last year, he’s at .366 in 2009. The fly balls come with a trade-off – more outs. His batting average on balls in play has dropped from .317 last year (and .330 for his career) down to .271, and it’s not just bad luck – extreme flyball hitters simply don’t post high BABIPs, because fly balls turn into outs a lot more often than ground balls do.

The average BABIP for the ten guys with a FB% over 50% is .263. Among that group, Granderson’s .271 BABIP actually ranks fourth, well ahead of guys like Dan Uggla, Jason Giambi, and Chris Young. As long as Granderson keeps hitting the ball in the air this often, we shouldn’t expect regression from his BABIP. However, the Tigers will probably take a little bit of a drop in batting average if Granderson hits 30+ home runs this year. Either way, he’s still a terrific player.





Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

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brtnsbs
14 years ago

He’s been a surprising power addition to my fantasy team, who is still stealing some bases. Awesome to have him on my team and good to know that he won’t be regressing much in the HR category given his HR/FB percentage!