Curtis Granderson Is Even Less “Clutch” Than You Already Think
I hate it when announcers try to be “stat geeks” and get it wrong because they aren’t fully committed to the approach and just want to “look up to date”.
Case in point, MASN announcers trying to stress how vital Granderson is to the Yankees.
They show a table to players who “have the most homeruns that have either tied the game or giving their team the lead” to prove a point.
Granderson has 16 of such homeruns.
The problem is…a homerun in the first inning of a game making it 1-0 ends up on this list.
Not a great indicator of how “clutch” a guy is.
Granderson has 9 such homers this year. Another 5 in the 2d inning.
In fact, innings 1-3 find him hitting nearly .300 AVG, SLG over .500, OPS near 1.000 and half of his 34 homeruns have been hit in the early frames.
But once the game gets into the deeper innings, it gets real ugly. Real fast.
| Split | G | AB | R | HR | RBI | SB | BB | SO | TB | tOPS+ | sOPS+ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st inning | 107 | 94 | 24 | 9 | 19 | 3 | 12 | 25 | .319 | .396 | .670 | 1.066 | 63 | 160 | 174 |
| 2nd inning | 40 | 35 | 7 | 5 | 13 | 1 | 3 | 9 | .286 | .375 | .771 | 1.146 | 27 | 174 | 215 |
| Ext inning | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | .000 | .167 | .000 | .167 | 0 | -49 | -52 |
| Innings 1-3 | 128 | 195 | 40 | 17 | 48 | 5 | 23 | 53 | .297 | .374 | .610 | .984 | 119 | 141 | 165 |
| Innings 4-6 | 127 | 149 | 23 | 11 | 14 | 2 | 20 | 51 | .188 | .287 | .436 | .723 | 65 | 78 | 91 |
| Innings 7-9 | 127 | 145 | 20 | 6 | 17 | 1 | 21 | 51 | .207 | .310 | .379 | .689 | 55 | 73 | 99 |
This is where Granderson is tragically bad. (Though not as bad as that big o’fer in extra-innings he has posted all season).
The key stat (if any of those can be “key”) is OPS+. An OPS+ of 100 = league average. More than that is good, below is is sub-par. In the most important situations he isn’t even half as good as an average big-league hitter.
| Split | G | GS | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | tOPS+ | sOPS+ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Late & Close | 62 | 82 | 69 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 12 | 29 | .159 | .280 | .217 | .498 | 31 | 48 |
But unfortunately not when we need him to.
