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.

Apologies for the reference, but this seems like an appropriate title on this September 21st.  If I had any photoshopping skill whatsoever, you would probably be looking at a photoshop of Curtis Granderson as a member of Earth Wind and Fire.  We can all be thankful that we are not.

We can also be thankful for Curtis Granderson’s September performance, as he has been one of the bright spots in an otherwise frustrating month full of tough losses, interesting bullpen usage, and an irritating inability to hit with runners on base.  When healthy, Granderson has been fairly consistent but not spectacular at the plate, posting OPS’s around .750 in June, July, and August.  While not a horrible performance, we expected better from Granderson, as did the Yankees, when they included now-Rookie of the Year candidate Austin Jackson and Ian Kennedy in a deal to acquire the 29 year-old centerfielder.

In September, Granderson has posted a .290/.397/.645 line with 6 homers, good for a 1.042 OPS and a .449 wOBA.  A closer look at the numbers could give us a better idea of whether there has been genuine improvement in Granderson this month, or if we could expect a regression (I recognize that an 18-game September sample is not incredibly significant, but bear with me anyway).  Going to the cliched evaluation of luck, BABIP, we can see that Granderson’s September BABIP of .279 is not particularly high, especially considering he had a .310 BABIP in the month of August, and a .270 in June.  Granderson’s batted ball data (from Fangraphs) also does not appear to show a major change, and his line drive percentage is actually lower in September than it was in July or August.  His HR/FB percentage of 25% in September looks a little fluky, so some regression in power could be in order.

Probably the biggest stride that Granderson has made in September is in the arena of plate discipline.  Through 18 games in September, Granderson has walked 11 times, impressive considering his highest monthly total prior to September was 10 in August.  The increased walk rate has also been accompanied by a decrease in strikeout rate, and his 11:13 bb:k ratio is very strong.  However, Grandy’s pitches/plate appearance ratio appears similar to to previous months (around 4 pitches/PA), so he does not appear to be taking more pitches.  What does this mean?  Perhaps he is making better decisions on which pitches to take and which ones to swing at.

What do these data mean for Granderson?  I recognize the small sample, and it is possible that maybe he’s simply facing weaker pitching in September (though considering the Yankees’ September opponents, I am skeptical).  If you’re a believer in the magic of Kevin Long, one could attribute the improvement to the work that Long did with Granderson recently.  It does appear that Granderson has been making better quality contact and has been swinging at better pitches.  It is possible that this is just a hot streak in a short sample, so we will have to continue following Granderson’s performance to see if he is able to sustain his improvements.  If Granderson is able to continue his hot streak going into the postseason, it will be interesting to see if this has any effect on his lineup placement in playoff games.  I imagine he will still hit 8th against lefties, but maybe against righties Girardi will try him higher in the order.  Regardless, if Granderson can keep this up, the Yankee lineup going into the postseason will be that much longer and more dangerous.

One of the frequent cautions we hear when the Yankees bring in a left handed hitter is brought to the Yankees is that he will get pull happy playing in Yankee Stadium. I can’t recall if this was exactly the case with Curtis Granderson, but I’m sure at least a few people brought it up. Let’s see what we can dig up in the Spray Charts.

Here’s Curtis’s spray chart from 2009. Obviously, this has a bigger sample because it encompasses a full season without time surrendered to the disabled list.

There, we see a fair amount of hits to left and center field, but most of the hits seem to be concentrated to the right side of the field. Via FanGraphs, let’s look at his splits in terms of hit direction. In 2009, Granderson had a total of 157 hits. 19 went to left (12.1%), 39 to center (24.84), and 99 to right (63.06). We can see that a pretty wide majority of of Granderson’s hits landed in right in 2009. Let’s check out 2010.

Just at first glance, the hits look a little more evenly spread. And, lately, we’ve been seeing Granderson drive the ball to the opposite field more, mostly after his work with Kevin Long. Thus far, Curtis has 82 his on the season. Nine to left (10.98%), 28 to center (34.15), and 51 to right field (32.48). So, it would appear that Granderson has not been pull happy at all and has adjusted his game to go back up the middle and the other way a little more.

How has this happened? Let’s look at the pitches Curtis has swung at to determine this. 2009 will be first with 2010 to follow.

The latter chart is less cluttered because of a shorter time frame/smaller sample size, but we can see that it appears Curtis is seeing fewer pitches on the inner part of the plate. As good hitters do, Granderson is taking what’s given to him and hitting the ball to left and center.

So, no, Curtis Granderson has not gotten pull happy since joining the Yankees. Instead, he’s adjusted his approach based on the pitches he’s seen–and his struggles in the middle of the season–to become a more “widespread,” so to speak, hitter.