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Each season, Randal Grichuk starts great, we are told he’s got a new hitting philosophy, and then he goes through a cold stretch. Odds are he’ll have another hot stretch and end up with stats that roughly match what he’s done every other season of his career. Which could be described as ‘pretty good’.
This year, on May 8th, Randal was hitting .305/.346/.508. Since then, .237/.256/.438. As always, if you are going to have a hot streak, do it at the start of the season. It will take months before anyone notices you have an OPS of .694 since mid-May. And broadcasters will be trotting out the line that you are ‘letting the pitch travel’ or whatever the catchphrase is that year until the season ends. And they will continue to tell you how he ‘saw the challenge of the team having too many outfielders and upped his game so he wouldn’t be the one sitting.’
Randal has been striking out less the last couple of seasons. This year he is striking out 22.4% of the time. Career he has a 27.1% rate. But he isn’t walking much, 3.7% down from the 5.6% rate last year. If he would walk a bit more, we’d like him better.
Anyway, at the moment, Randal has an OPS+ of 103 (or, if you would prefer, wRC+ of 102). So he’s been slightly above average.
He has an fWAR of 0.5, bWAR of 0.9.
Defensively? FanGraphs has his UZR/150 at -9.8 in CF but 10.3 in right field. He’s only played 145 innings in right, which isn’t enough innings for UZR to balance out. But he looks much better in right than in left. He doesn’t have any official errors (which surprises me, I’m sure I’ve seen ball glance off his glove and fall to the ground).
Buck and Pat have been making a big deal about his RBI count (and that of everyone in the lineup, for that matter), and Randal has been hitting great with RISP, .309/.340/.574, which, I guess, is a good thing. But, as I used to say, when Ryan Goins had great RISP numbers, why not hit like this all the time if this is a skill? If you can be an All-Star, why not do it.
But then, with our lineup, he doesn’t have to be an All-Star (we have four of those already).
Poll
For the first half, I’d give Randal Grichuk an
This poll is closed
-
4%
A
(33 votes) -
16%
B+
(133 votes) -
38%
B
(310 votes) -
22%
B-
(182 votes) -
10%
C+
(89 votes) -
4%
C
(37 votes) -
1%
C-
(16 votes) -
0%
D+
(4 votes) -
0%
D
(2 votes) -
0%
D-
(3 votes) -
0%
F
(2 votes)