Just Mets

It was getting weird for Curtis Granderson, wasn’t it?

Heading into play on Tuesday, Granderson had gone 6-for-41 with eight strikeouts at the plate. He had no extra-base hits, no RBI.

Bartolo Colon had more RBI than Granderson through the first two weeks of the season.

Again, very weird.

When a player goes 6-for-41 at the plate, its expected he has racked up a ton of strikeouts, is missing hittable pitches in the zone, and chasing pitches outside of the zone.

That was not the case for Granderson.

He has hit line drives, and hit them to all fields. He has only swung at 15 percent of pitches outside the strike zone, and made contact with over 90 percent of the pitches he’s seen inside the strike zone. That would certainly help explain the league-leading 12 walks he had heading into Tuesday night.

But that does anything to explain a 6-for-41 skid at the plate.

The only thing that could explain Granderson’s situation was this: bad luck. And on Tuesday, it seemed as though all of the bad luck built into most of Grandsons 52 plate appearances started to turn around.

Granderson went 3-for-5 with a double and four RBI against the Braves on Tuesday night has he led the charge towards the Mets ninth win in a row and their best start in 29 years.

“He had a big night and got some hits. It was good for him,” manager Terry Collins said after the win. “We all think that when you look up at the end of the year, I’m sure his numbers are going to be there.”

Granderson’s three hits raised his average 50 points last night from .146 to .196 for the year. His on-base percentage is at .362.

“[Granderson is] one of the guys who’s in that room and makes that room better, the way he goes about things, his makeup, what he says, how he handles himself. So it’s nice to see him have a big game,” Collins continued.

It was only a matter of time. His approach and contact and line drive rates had been too good for this to continue for that much longer.

What’s most impressive about Granderson through this stretch is he hasn’t changed anything about what he was doing at the plate. In a big slump like this, often times hitters will try and make changes to their attack plan and really try to do too much.

Granderson stayed the course, and after two weeks, it began to pay off for him, which in turn paid off for the Mets.

Perhaps the fact the Mets were winning helped Granderson keep things in perspective and stay patient with the results, but no matter what it was nice to see his investment in the process pay some dividends on Tuesday.