JABO: Curtis Granderson Turns Back the Clock
This past weekend’s four-game series in San Francisco between the Giants and Washington Nationals may be remembered as an important point in the playoff race for the teams fighting for the NL East crown. By getting swept for their sixth consecutive loss, the Nationals now find themselves reeling, four and a half games behind the Mets. Victims of their own sweep at the hands of the Pirates, New York can now look forward to better times, as they play no other NL teams with a winning percentage over .500 for the remainder of the season.
The Mets currently have an almost 70% chance of winning the division per our playoff odds; we predicted them to have a 7% chance at the beginning of the year. Crazy things happen during baseball seasons, and projections are made with the information on hand at the time — teams over or underperform; players get traded; young stars get called up early. The Mets now find themselves in a position that was viewed as extremely unlikely at the beginning of the race, and for the first time in what seems like a long time, they’re now favorites.
Adding to the unlikeliness is the fact that New York’s offense has been powered in large part by a resurgent former 40 home run threat who now finds himself toward the later stages of his career. Quite simply, Curtis Granderson is having a great season, and he’s turning back the clock in some rare ways by doing so.
We know who Granderson was during his prime: an elite power-hitting outfielder with great speed on the base paths. An injury-marred 2013 season with the Yankees seemed to mark a steep downturn, as he was able to perform just 7% better than league average on offense during his first season with the Mets in 2014. Though passable, it probably wasn’t the kind of production New York had in mind when they agreed to terms on his four-year, $60 million deal in the winter of 2013.
This year, however, we’re seeing glimmers of the Granderson of old. Already matching his 20 home run output from last year, the left-hander’s overall offensive performance is at its highest level since 2011: he’s now performed 22% better than the league average offensive player, good for the 17th-best offensive outfielder in the major leagues as measured by wRC+.
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Owen Watson writes for FanGraphs and The Hardball Times. Follow him on Twitter @ohwatson.
is he still runjing weirdly hunched over? yep!
Hmm, I don’t know about “great season.” It looked like just another lunch-bucket .230 BA season through March, which has been the norm for the past 3 years. Now he’s got it to a respectable .249 BA.
If you’re planning to judge a player solely based on his BA…
I think you’re on the wrong baseball site.
What is it with these people? What are they even doing reading articles here, much less commenting? It’d be really nice if FG had å better-developed community with persistent identity instead of this bizarre gallery of drive-by commenters who appear baffled about the very most basic things the site is supposed to represent.
It’s really more of a very good season, though, albeit better than his 40+ homer 2012. Even after tonight’s 2 homer game. He may get to a 5 WAR season. Hey, maybe there’s hope for Cuddyer next year. 🙂
“He’s now performed 22% better than the league average offensive player.” An overwhelming one-line effort to justify an older, overpaid outfielder with a minor uptick in contributions in the last two months. Beautiful
Oy vey.
But he’s not nearly overpaid based on his performance so far.
If we go by AAV of his first two years of his current contract, then he’s actually given the Mets a little surplus WAR. Considering NY will have paid him $29 million total by the end of this year and he will have put up ~5 WAR (at the very least), that would be $5.8 million/win, around or lower than the price of a free agent win when the contract was signed a couple years ago (about $6 million).
That doesn’t take into account his performance and price for the upcoming final two years of his contract, of course, but to say he’s been overpaid for these past two years is not accurate given his WAR.
And the other factor, which isn’t incorporated into AAV but is more relevant to a team’s success, is when the wins come. If he swapped his production over the last two years, that would have led to another 3 or so wins last year, which would have been pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things. But they’d have 3 fewer wins this year, which would drop their playoff odds significantly. He picked a good time to have a rebound.
And perhaps most importantly from a sabr perspective: he’s fun to watch and an easy guy to root for.