Anthony Bartiromo
Yasmani Grandal. One of the most interesting players in Major League Baseball today. The White Sox’s backstop consistently posts a low batting average and high strikeout rates, yet he is also hitting in the middle of the order every day. Why is that? A casual fan will look at his .240 batting average and wonder the same thing. However, a deeper dive suggests that Grandal is in fact an elite hitter. This is largely in part due to his top-tier plate discipline and power. In addition to his offense, Grandal has also held above-average defensive metrics behind the plate throughout his career. This combination of offense and defense makes him one of the best catchers in baseball today.
Step 1: The Bad
Yes, the strikeouts and batting average are bad. A career .240 average and 23.7% strikeout rate are both not good. His career strikeout percentage is higher than notable power-hitting catchers such as J.T. Realmuto, Salvador Perez, Will Smith, and more. This strikeout rate is also slightly higher than the league strikeout rate of 21.4%. There is also obviously a lot of swing and miss in Grandal’s approach as his whiff percentage consistently finishes in the bottom half of the MLB. Lastly, Grandal’s rWAR is nothing special as it stands at 21.7 for his 10-year career while consistently being a 3 WAR player a year. For comparison, Grandal has a 7.0 rWAR from 2019 to 2021, while J.T. Realmuto’s is 9.3. Salvador Perez, who did not even play in 2019, has a 7.4 rWAR during the same time span. All these metrics seem to make him look like a replacement-level player right? Wrong.
Step 2: The Good
How could a player with a career .240 batting average be an elite hitter? To answer this, we go to our old friend Billy Beane.
Grandal has an excellent career walk rate of 14.9%, substantially higher than the league average of 8.2%.
As you can see from this graphic, Grandal has led all catchers in walk rate since 2017 by a substantial margin. Catchers that Grandal is often compared to such as J.T. Realmuto and Salvador Perez, are not even in the top 10. His walk percentage has consistently been in the 92nd percentile and above for the last four years.
As you can see from his Baseball Savant percentile rankings, he is an elite hitter. His patient approach at the plate allows him to get into hitter-friendly counts much more often than other hitters. When he does get his pitch, he hits it hard, seen with his hard-hit rate consistently being in the 90+ percentile. This is something that Realmuto cannot say as his hard-hit rate is consistently in the 70s.
To look at how this approach transfers into results, we look at the stat wRC+. wRC+ is a Fangraphs stat that measures how many runs a player creates for his team with 100 being league average. This stat also takes factors such as park effects and time periods into account. Grandal has a career 121 wRC+. This means that he creates 21% more runs than the average hitter. From 2019 to 2021, Grandal has posted a 132 wRC+, higher than J.T. Realmuto, Marcus Semien, Jose Ramirez, and many other notable players. Compared to catchers over that span, he is fourth in wRC+, with the difference between him and first only being 3 runs. Who are the players ahead of him? Will Smith (135 wRC+), Mitch Garver (135 wRC+), and Salvador Perez (133 wRC+). What separates Grandal from them? Defense.
Step 3: The Defense
Remember when I said that Grandal’s rWAR wasn’t anything special? That’s because rWAR leaves one critical metric out of its calculation, framing. For those not familiar, framing is a technique used by catchers to receive a pitch outside of the strike zone and catch it to make it look like a strike to the umpire.
The best can consistently steal strikes, while the worst often do the opposite. Fangraphs’ fWAR takes framing into account. Grandal’s career fWAR is 38.0, much better than his rWAR of 21.7. Over the past three years, Grandal has amassed 20.3 framing runs, the 3rd most in that span.
As you can see from the graphic of the top framers in the MLB, Smith, Garver, and Perez aren’t even in the top 20. While these players had slightly higher wRC+’s than Grandal, they are considerably worse framers than him. But framing isn’t everything, right? True, Grandal shines in other aspects of catching, having 74 career defensive runs saved (DRS). This mark puts him 4th in DRS for catchers over that span. He is also very good at throwing runners out, as his caught stealing percentage over the past three years has been 30.67%, substantially better than the league average of 25%. Grandal also ranks third among catchers in total caught steals for that time period. Since the catcher position is the position where defense matters most, Grandal’s all-star level offense with above-average defense makes him one of the best catchers in the game today. While Grandal’s defense can be appreciated by the casual fan, his offense exceeds his low batting average.
In a world where players are compared by how much value they bring to the team, Yasmani Grandal stands out. Being able to have a top-tier bat and solid defensive metrics at a position where both are hard to come by makes Grandal special. Casual baseball fans will look at Grandal’s low average and wonder why he’s still in the league, but just a slight dive into the advanced metrics show just how much value he brings to a team. It’s a new world in baseball, and it is time for people to realize that a .240 hitter could be one of the leading forces for a championship contender.
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