Just Mets

It’s been a bit of an odd start for Curtis Granderson so far in 2015. While Granderson leads the league in walks (12), he’s hitting just .146 through 13 games thus far. Even more alarming is his slugging percentage, which is also .146, meaning that he has yet to record a single extra-base hit yet this season.

Getting on base, via the hit or the walk, is obviously incredibly important in baseball. However at some point, no matter what, Granderson was going to have to start hitting and driving in runs–he has zero RBI to this point. That is even more important now.

In last week’s series against the Phillies, the Mets captain and arguably best player, David Wright, went down with a hamstring injury, sidelining him for at least a few weeks. The team was able to survive this in the following days, however, with contributions from Michael Cuddyer, Lucas Duda and the seemingly emerging Travis d’Arnaud. Things changed on Sunday when d’Arnaud was hit in the hand by Marlins reliever A.J. Ramos. It was revealed  later in the game d’Arnaud suffered from a fracture in his hand, sending him to the disabled list as well. This hurts the Mets greatly.

Wright’s already down, d’Arnaud has been one of the team’s most prolific and productive hitters two weeks into the season and now they’ve lost that. He appeared to be budding into the star player we all thought he could be, but now that’s been put on hold for an unforeseen period of time, and the line-up takes another hit. With Wright and d’Arnaud out, the big hitters left in this line-up are Duda, Cuddyer and Granderson. Duda and Cuddyer have both been producing with big hits and have been driving in runs so far this season. Now, Granderson has to get going to support them.

Granted, Granderson hasn’t looked completely lost at the plate, as he’s hit the ball hard and has been the victim of some bad luck. Curtis is currently batting .182 on balls he’s put in play. As a comparison, Granderson’s BABIP last season was .265, and the NL average in 2015 currently sits at .289. So, judging by that, the worm will turn at some point and he’ll start hitting with more power and into better luck, even if it means his strikeouts increase a bit.

In addition, 33.3 percent–exactly one-third–of the balls Granderson has hit this season have been line drives, according to FanGraphs, while his ground ball and fly ball percentages have both decreased from last season. Even so, Curtis needs to start showing off the power and run producing onus that he’s capable of, now more than ever. The Mets need him to.