Saturday, March 24, 2007

CG28

Curtis Granderson, he of View From the Outfield on MLBlogs, is already one of the coolest people in Major League Baseball. The question for me, is, what kind of a season will he put together in 2007? The kid from Chicago tore up Detroit's minor league system to the tune of a career .300 batting average, .383 on base percentage, and .495 slugging percentage. And he did this at age appropriate levels so he wasn't padding his stats as a 23 year old in low A ball.

Those stats suggest he will be a productive player in the majors. In 2006, however, Curtis was up and down and finished his first full season with a .260/.335/.439 hitting line that had to be a little disappointing. Let's dig further...

In 2005, Curtis was a part time player in July and August before playing the entire month of September. Since he became a full timer in September of 2005, here are his month by month stats...

Sept 2005 - .287/.337/.500
April 2006 - .269/.376/.473
May 2006 - .287/.365/.475
June 2006 - .303/.384/.495
July 2006 - .273/.332/.352
Aug 2006 - .156/.224/.256
Sept 2006 - .273/.314/.555


Notice something here? The kid has been great except for July and especially August last summer. Did he hit a rookie wall in his first full MLB season? Did pitchers start to figure him out? Well, he did bounce back with a nice September that included 15 extra base hits (5 doubles, 4 triples, and 6 home runs).

This spring, he has been working on cutting down on the strikeouts. He has always K'd a lot, but last year he whiffed 174 times in 159 games. That's a lot. This spring he has cut back to only 6 strike outs in 16 games (53 at bats) which probably works out to around 70 or 80 in a full season for a leadoff hitter. On the other hand, he has only walked twice which isn't very good for a guy with a good eye.

I guess what I'm hoping is that when you combine his minor league performance with the fact that 5 of his 7 months as a pro have been very good, I am quite hopeful that Curtis will have a big year in 2007. Something along the lines of a .285 BA, .360 OBP, and .475 SLG is not out of the question.

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