Curtis Granderson: Another Mets Free Agent Bust?

The Mets took a chance last year and inked Curtis Granderson, age 33, to a four-year contract worth $60 million. Granderson was just coming off an injury plagued season with the Yankees in which he fractured his right forearm, and then the pinky in his left hand, sidelining him for over 100 games. In 2013 he posted a slash line of .229/.317/.409. Prior to his 2013 season, Granderson finished 4th in MVP voting in 2011, and was an All-Star in 2011 and 2012, finishing with more than 40 HR and 100 RBI’s.

So what can we expect from Curtis Granderson for the rest of his career with the Mets? Is there hope that he will be the big clutch hitter the Mets desperately need and come close to his 2011 and 2012 seasons with the Yankees? Or will his name be forever remembered by Mets fans in the same category as Jason Bay and Chris Young, forged in the hall of ineptitude? Here is a look at Curtis Granderson’s numbers after 2010 when Granderson turned 29 and started his stint with the Yankees. Here is a look at some of his numbers from 2010-2012, before his injury-riddled 2013 campaign:

Season	Age	G	AVG	OBP	SLG	wOBA	HR	R	RBI	BB	SO
2010	29	136	.247	.324	.468	.344	24	76	67	53	116
2011	30	156	.262	.364	.550	.393	41	136	119	85	169
2012	31	160	.232	.319	.492	.346	43	102	106	75	195
Average		151	.247	.336	.503	.361	36	105	97	1	157

It is important to note that he is playing the majority of his games at notoriously hitter-friendly Yankees Stadium. Using a measure of the effect of Yankee Stadium called park index, it can found that Yankee Stadium has about a +3% increase on a left-hander’s average, and a +53% on a hitter’s home run total. Granderson hit 56 total homers at Yankee Stadium from 2010-2012. After the Mets reconfigured their outfield, their left-handed batters hit on average +2% more home runs. If we adjust Curtis Granderson’s home run total to playing at CitiField for these years, his adjusted home run total is somewhere between 26-27 per year.

This still is a great total, and I think any Met fan would welcome a 25+ home run season from Granderson with open arms. Right now there are 10 games left in the season and Granderson has 18 home runs. He could sit around 20 this season which would not be terrible unless we remember his atrocious .218/.320./.374 slash line. We also have to consider the unfortunate factor of Granderson’s age to this equation. Granderson has a little bit of a strange aging curve because of his incredible seasons at age 30 and 31. I decided to look at how similar players performed at ages 32, 33, 34, and 35 (no player that has a top-ten similarity score has played a season at age 36 yet). The similarity scores were calculated based on Baseball-Reference’s similarity scores equation.

All of my worst fears came true and I started having flashbacks of one of the all-time worst Mets busts as I saw the name that popped up at number 1 — Jason Bay. Here is what other similar players did at age 32, 33, 34, and 35 (I omitted information if a player played less than 70 games aside from Granderson’s season at age 32.):

Sim	Player	OPS- age 32	OPS- age 33	OPS- age 34	OPS- age 35
	Curtis Granderson	0.72	0.69
922	Jason Bay	0.70	0.54	0.69
914	Wally Post	0.84	0.53
908	Jesse Barfield
906	Jose Bautista	0.86	0.92	—	—
903	Jose Cruz	0.73	0.69
901	Preston Wilson
899	Edwin Encarnacion	—	—	—	—
899	Phil Nevin	0.82	0.86	0.67	0.76
896	Larry Hisle
894	Jayson Werth	0.72	0.83	0.93	0.83

This does not paint a good picture of what we hope to expect from Granderson. For a player signed to the amount of money as Granderson, I would like to see an OPS around or above .800. There are only two out of ten players — Phil Nevin and Jayson Werth, that hit decently at the advanced ages of 34 and 35 (Werth is hitting pretty well with over 80 RBI’s with an OPS above .800, Nevin hit decently with a 0.76 OPS and 22 home runs at age 35). Six out of ten players ended their careers following a tremendous decline before getting to age 34 (I included Jason Bay whose career was arguably over before age 31, a year after signing with the Mets), Edwin Encarnacion is too young to make any conclusions about, and it is looking like Jose Bautista will play well, or at least decently at ages 34 and 35.

Even though most similar players did not have good seasons, or even reach seasons at ages 34, 35, and 36, similar players like Jayson Werth, Phil Nevin, and Jose Bautista give us a glimmer of hope. Similar players in no way give us a definitive look at a player’s future, so there is also always the possibility Granderson carves himself a much different path than any of the players on this list. To determine what might be causing Granderson’s decline, I’m going to look through Granderson’s batted ball statistics along with walk rate and strikeout rate:

Year	Team	Age	BB%	K%	GB%	FB%	HR/FB	BABIP
2010	Yankees	29	10.0%	22.0%	33.0%	47.2%	14.5%	.277
2011	Yankees	30	12.3%	24.5%	33.8%	48.0%	20.5%	.295
2012	Yankees	31	11.0%	28.5%	33.1%	44.0%	24.2%	.260
2014	Mets	33	12.3%	22.0%	33.2%	48.3%	9.5%	.255

The most glaring discrepancy between Granderson’s time with the Mets and Yankees is his HR/FB rate. His BABIP has gone down a little, but it is not that far removed from his numbers from 2010-2012. BABIP is a good statistic to look at to determine if a player is having a relatively unlucky season by comparing it to that player’s normal BABIP. It looks like he might have been a little lucky getting hits in 2011. Other than that, BABIP does not tell the story of what has happened to Granderson in 2014.

My initial thought from watching Granderson play daily was that he is striking out at a much higher rate. In fact, his K% is lower than it was in 2011 and 2012, and on par with what it was in 2010. And here is where we come to his HR/FB. Although Granderson is hitting about the same FB%, the percent of his fly balls that are going out of the park is dismally low compared to how it was when he was hitting 40+ home runs at Yankee Stadium. Although this could partially be age-related, it could be easily argued that a huge component of this is also the change in ballpark where Granderson plays. It is hard to determine if Granderson could possibly change his approach somehow to adjust to CitiField’s landscape when he is going to be 34 years old next year. The future is looking bleak for Mets fans unless Granderson can figure out how to turn things around next season.