It’s unusual to see a player make a transformation similar to the one that lefty-swinging Curtis Granderson has undergone in his performance versus lefty pitchers. Early in his career, Granderson experienced limited success versus southpaws. But in the second half of his career he’s handled them quite well. Last year he had a .742 OPS versus LHP compared to a .703 mark versus RHP.

It’s interesting to see how pitchers attack Granderson. Often times it’s not readily apparent watching on television what a pitcher is trying to do versus a certain hitter. But in the first year of watching Granderson on a daily basis, it was easy to see that LHP were going away whenever they could. Let’s look at it in a Brooks Baseball chart broken down by location

There are 25 areas in this chart and in the four boxes of the extreme lower left, LHP threw the ball 37% of the time. This makes sense, as you can easily imagine a southpaw trying to get the lefty Granderson chasing on a breaking ball low and away. But even if you just look at the hard pitches thrown by lefties, which you can filter for if you go to Brooks Baseball, you see them attacking that same small area 21% of the time.

The conventional way to attack hitters is to go either low and away or up and in. Now a lefty is unlikely to use breaking balls to attack up and in on a hitter. But when we limit it to the hard stuff, southpaws attacked Granderson up and in just 8% of the time. Clearly, the book on Granderson for lefties is to go away, away, away.

And the odd thing about this is when it works, it works great. Granderson struck out 49 times in 155 ABs against southpaws last year. While it’s hard to look great while striking out, Granderson would look particularly inept while whiffing against lefties.

You hear stories about old time players who would intentionally strike out on pitches in certain locations in non-crucial times of the game to ensure that they would get that same pitch when the game was on the line. Then, at least according to legend, Joe Slugger would then turn on that pitch which was really where he liked to hit the ball. It almost feels that way with Granderson and lefties.

When he put the ball in play versus southpaws, Granderson had a .310 BABIP versus LHP last year. He also did very well in the power department, with .168 ISO and 7 HR. In the National League last year, the average lefty ISO was .103 versus LHP.

So, how did Granderson go from being poor against LHP to being better than average? It’s hard not to notice that the transformation came when he went from the Tigers to the Yankees. In his last year in Detroit, Granderson had a .484 OPS versus southpaws. In his first year in the Bronx, that mark jumped up to .647 and the following year it was a .944 mark. He’s been over .700 in each of the following three years after the tremendous season in 2011.

One explanation could be the simple maturation of an above-average MLB hitter. Another might be the friendlier hitting environment moving from Detroit to New York. A third possible explanation is that his coaches in New York were able to help him with a way to attack southpaws.

In his last year with the Tigers, Granderson hit .168 (19-113) versus four-seam fastballs and sinkers from lefties. The following year with the Yankees, Granderson hit .321 (34-106) against those hard offerings from southpaws. Last year with the Mets, Granderson hit .306 (26-85) against those pitches. For whatever reason, Granderson went from being helpless against hard stuff from LHP to being able to handle them with aplomb.

As you probably already know, the Mets hired Kevin Long to be their new hitting coach. Long was Granderson’s hitting coach his entire tenure with the Yankees and Granderson has been open about his appreciation for Long’s assistance. It will be interesting to see if Long can have a similar impact on other lefty batters for the Mets, specifically Lucas Duda.

Last year Duda had just a .516 OPS versus southpaws and in his career, he’s posted a .610 OPS against LHP. In 2014, Duda hit .217 (13-60) against hard stuff from southpaws. It will be interesting to see how he fares against them this upcoming season. If Duda starts regularly hitting .300 versus hard stuff from lefties, it will be an indication that Long was able to help him like he helped Granderson, who has batted .304 versus hard stuff from lefties since 2010.

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