Many news articles of late have tackled some of Curtis Granderson’s issues at the plate but mainly revolve around his high strikeout rate. While I don’t dispute that this is an area of improvement for Curtis, I do not believe it is his biggest issue. His biggest issue, and one that rapidly dropped last year, is his ability to take a walk.
While Curtis has a number of issues to work out, strikeouts have been probably the most targeted but not really the problem. When you look at Curtis’s issues against lefty pitchers most assume he will get struck out, but this really isn’t the case. Yes, his OBP drops from .353 against RHPs to .277 against LHPs but his strikeout rate remains nearly the same.
| AB | SO | SO% | BB | BB% | |
| RHP | 449 | 125 | 27.83% | 56 | 12.47% |
| LHP | 147 | 49 | 33.33% | 10 | 6.80% |
The walk rate drops almost in half while the strikeout rate goes up not quite as much. I took a bit of a deeper look at how Granderson battled the walks through the year and found that walks appear to be a much bigger battle for him.
[UPDATE] It does seem that Billfer over at the Detroit Tigers Weblog was thinking of the same subject at the same time. Good article posted about Curtis and whether he really needs to improve on the strike outs. I agree with the conclusion.
The walk rate through the year was one that went down drastically from the beginning of the season to the end. The strikeout rate on the other hand was pretty static. The below graph shows the walk and strikeout rate for Curtis from month to month in 2006:
So during the “Great Tigers Second Half Slump of 2006″, which Curtis certainly participated in, strikeouts didn’t really change but walks did and by a significant amount. So plate discipline is a big area for Curtis, but maybe targeting strikeouts isn’t where the Tigers will get the most bang for the buck. We should still put this into perspective as Curtis Granderson was better than most at taking a walk. Below is a look at each Tigers ability to both strikeout and take a walk. This will show that Grandersons strikeouts, while still an issue, are just as much of an issue for some other Tigers and might just be due to the shear number of overall strikeouts (which is due to his overall number of AB’s.)
| Player | AB | SO | SO% | BB | BB% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ramon Santiago | 80 | 14 | 17.50% | 1 | 1.25% |
| Vance Wilson | 152 | 33 | 21.71% | 2 | 1.32% |
| Neifi Perez | 301 | 25 | 8.31% | 8 | 2.66% |
| Placido Polanco | 461 | 27 | 5.86% | 17 | 3.69% |
| Ivan Rodriguez | 547 | 86 | 15.72% | 26 | 4.75% |
| Brent Clevlen | 39 | 15 | 38.46% | 2 | 5.13% |
| Omar Infante | 224 | 45 | 20.09% | 14 | 6.25% |
| Dmitri Young | 172 | 39 | 22.67% | 11 | 6.40% |
| Craig Monroe | 541 | 126 | 23.29% | 37 | 6.84% |
| Magglio Ordonez | 593 | 87 | 14.67% | 45 | 7.59% |
| Brandon Inge | 542 | 128 | 23.62% | 43 | 7.93% |
| Sean Casey | 397 | 43 | 10.83% | 33 | 8.31% |
| Gary Sheffield | 151 | 16 | 10.60% | 13 | 8.61% |
| Chris Shelton | 373 | 107 | 28.69% | 34 | 9.12% |
| Marcus Thames | 348 | 92 | 26.44% | 37 | 10.63% |
| Curtis Granderson | 596 | 174 | 29.19% | 66 | 11.07% |
| Carlos Guillen | 543 | 87 | 16.02% | 71 | 13.08% |
So while his overall walk percentage was very good for the Tigers, it slumped last year. The Tigers focus should be to both make sure that this slump doesn’t return in addition to the strikeout rate. If the walk rate had remained we might not be talking about strikeouts and much more about how awesome and powerful Curtis Granderson is.