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.