75,482 Hours of Individualized Hitting Instruction Later...

Even If Granderson Turns It Around, Is He Past the Point of Self-Vindication?




It's certainly no secret in New York that Curtis Granderson has been a disappointment.  He's right up there with the series finale of Lost, the Lebron fiasco, my checking account, unemployment trends, and the arrest of Jetblue flight attendant Steve Slator for biggest letdowns of 2010.  The Yankees gave away their best outfield prospect in years and took on a $25.75 million financial load for the next three seasons--albeit, a microscopic drop in the payroll ocean for the Yanks--in exchange for...10 home runs, 34 RBIs, 10 stolen bases, and a .243 batting average through 114 games?  Ouch.  Mr. Cashman took that one right on the chin, didn't he?  And the fact that Grandy had averaged .278 / 25 / 70 with 19 SBs over his previous three seasons with the Tigers makes the sting of false expectation that much more palpable.  Throw in a broken down Nick Johnson and a horrifically overrated (and overpaid) Chan Ho Park, and you've got yourself one disastrous sequence of off-season transactions.  But as usual, I digress.

Look, Grandy is a human being.  I understand that.  Like most any other average-to-slightly-above-average baseball player, he's going to have an off year or two.  But for that dip to come at this juncture in his career is kind of odd.  He's a 29-year old coming off the best season of his seven-year career.  He's now playing half his games at a smaller, more lefty-friendly ballpark.  He's in the bottom third of a superstar-laden lineup, one that distributes the offensive burden far more evenly than the one he anchored in Detroit.

Maybe the lack of pressure to perform ended up being a negative thing for Grandy.  Maybe because all the factors seemed to tilt in his favor, the center fielder placed more pressure on himself than was otherwise there.  Maybe he's just another guy who can't handle the New York media/atmosphere.  Or maybe, as my friend Mr. Anthony Crupi suggested to me the other night, he saw many more fastballs in his years as a leadoff hitter with Tigers than he has this season as a #7 hitter with New York.  This is an interesting theory, and it appears to make sense, since it is evident that Grandy has problems handling the steady barrage of offspeed pitches he's been subjected in 2010.  Whether the hole in his swing exists because he is unaccustomed to seeing so many breaking balls and change-ups, or because he harbors a natural inability to keep his hands back and use the whole field is tough to measure.  Still, props to you Crup on that astute observation.  He's a single man, ladies.  Take note.

Regardless of the reason (or reasons), one thing is for sure: Curtis isn't getting it done at the dish.  To be sure, he has had his flashes of brilliance.  The game-winning blast off Papelbon in the opening series and the two-homer game against the Royals are just two of his five standout moments.  Unfortunately, he hasn't been able to hold it together for more than a couple of games before plunging back into mediocrity.  He’s been a bust, quite a big one in fact, and no amount of excuse-making can overcome that incontrovertible truth.
Despite his flat-footed start in the Bronx, there is still plenty of season left, and Curtis can indeed wipe his slate clean and set himself for a much better beginning to the 2011 campaign.  And if there’s anyone who can make that happen for him, it’s none other than the Wizard of Wood.  The King of Contact.  The Master of Mashing.  The Guru of Gap-to-Gap Hitting.

I'm referring, of course, to Yankees hitting coach Kevin Long.  Mr. Long is quickly etching himself a portrait in the hallowed chambers of pinstripe hagiography (a big tip of the cap to Gordon Edes for that gem of an SAT word).  The things he's accomplished in his first year on the job have almost single-handedly saved the entire season for this team.  He has helped Robinson Cano bridge the gap from good hitter to great hitter (for now anyway), and he has transformed Nick Swisher into a full blown line-drive machine, tapping into potential that nobody, probably not even Swish himself, knew was there.  Ask any Yankee fan which two bats carried the squad through the first half of this season.  If they don’t say Cano and Swisher, ask them what kind of drugs they’re smoking and where you can acquire some.  Then drop me a line, ‘cause I want in on that Kool-aid.

So after four months of weak grounders and lazy fly balls, Granderson finally took a hint and has essentially asked the Sultan of Streaks to revolutionize his approach to hitting, much in the way that he did for Swish.  According to reports from the press, Long has shifted a substantial amount of his coaching focus to number 14, and the endless hours they’ve spent in the cages during the last few days have already paid dividends.  In this evening's matchup with the Royals, Curtis stayed on an offspeed pitch from southpaw Bruce Chen and dinked it into center field, driving in the first run of the contest.  While he didn’t scorch the 0-1 curveball, he kept his hands in the locked and loaded position and hit the ball where it was pitched.  Typically, you’ll see Granderson try and pull that pitch over the wall, resulting in either a routine fly or an inning-ending double play.  This time, however, he displayed a good approach and was rewarded with a good result.
In his second at-bat, Grandy yanked a bullet down the left field line, a hanging slider on the inner-third.  Again, he kept his hands loaded, was quick through the zone, and reacted to the location of the baseball.  You want to pull a pitch like that with authority, and that’s exactly what he did.  He even added a nice running catch in the eighth frame to compliment a solid showing with the stick.  Confidence is a beautiful thing when you’ve got it. 

Granderson's newly reformed stance and swing feature some of the tenets of the Kevin Long approach to hitting.  Pre-pitch, his hands are much quieter and he seems to have opened up his stance a smidge to give himself a better view of the mound.  He's coiling his hands as the pitcher kicks into his windup, a technique that has helped countless major leaguers keep their hands back and get the bat-head to the ball faster (including Hideki Matsui a couple years back).  Essentially, he has adopted and executed all of the mechanics that have been proven effective by Cano and Swisher.

So the question remains, if these adjustments translate into an explosive finish to the 2010 season, will it be enough for Granderson to redeem his image and his value to the Yankee faithful and the organization?  I think it would to some extent, but even if he hits .350 with 10 homers and 30 RBI through the remaining 58 games, fans in this town are hard to convert once you've made them into skeptics.  Pinstripe supporters are not going to be forgetting his slow start anytime soon, I can guarantee you that...unless homeboy does something dramatic in the postseason.  The most direct path to self-vindication and redemption in the eyes of any sports fan is to clutch up in the playoffs.  This is especially true in baseball.  It is extra-especially true of Yankees' baseball.  Keep that chin up, Grandy.  When the air is rife with the crisp smell of dying leaves, so too  hopefully will it resonate with the sound of well-struck cowhide, courtesy of the Grandyman himself.  We all know from his Tiger days that the Grandyman can.  With the guidance of Mr. Long, I'm hoping that 'can' soon becomes 'does'.