When the 2011 season started, I pointed out to Joe Girardi yesterday, Curtis Granderson was batting eighth.
“Did he?” Girardi said with a smile. “What was I thinking?”
Here we are five months later and Granderson is sitting on a career-best 32 home runs and leads the American League in runs (105) and RBI (93) after his two-run, sky-high blast in the sixth inning got the Yankees rolling on their way to a 6-5 victory over the Angels at Yankee Stadium.
It has been exactly one year since Granderson rebuilt his swing with hitting coach Kevin Long and the results have been amazing. Since those changes, Granderson, who batted third yesterday, has hit a stunning 46 home runs and driven in 127 runs.
This brings us to the makeover the Yankees lineup will undergo next week when Alex Rodriguez returns, probably in Kansas City. Rodriguez, who is coming back from knee surgery, will be dropped into his usual fourth spot as Girardi will have to figure out how to best use all his weapons.
Make no mistake, the Yankees are going to need those weapons to get past the Red Sox come October. By winning two of three against the Angels, though, they’ve pretty much locked up at least the wild card.
Mariano Rivera is going through a terrible stretch — yes, even baseball gods show their age — so right now the Yankees need offense. Rivera surrendered a three-run, pinch-hit home run to Russell Branyan in the ninth inning, but shortly after giving up that blast, Rivera was back on the field, smiling and pitching wiffle balls to his son during Yankees Family Day.
The Yankees lineup needs to keep pouring it on.
“It’s going to be great,” Girardi said of Rodriguez’s return. “He makes our lineup deeper.”
If it’s me, I put Rodriguez in the fourth spot, leave Granderson third, Robinson Cano, whose grand slam was the difference yesterday, fifth, and slide Mark Teixeira to sixth, keeping Brett Gardner’s speed at the top of the lineup and leaving Derek Jeter where he is comfortable at No. 2.
No matter what, this is a good problem to have and Granderson’s continued success is vital to the lineup’s success. Granderson has been the Yankees’ MVP.
“When you look at his numbers, you say he’s a home-run hitter. He’s been huge in our lineup and he just continues to roll for us,” Girardi said of Granderson, who does not consider himself a home-run hitter.
Here is the key that has unlocked Granderson’s swing: The biggest change he made with Long was eliminating holes in his swing and eliminating early movement so he is ready to strike at any time.
“There was extra step he used to do, now, he’s ready to go from the time he steps in there and is as close to the hitting position as anybody we’ve got,” Long told me.
Noted Granderson of the intriguing changes: “There are times when I still fight depending on what the pitcher has got going on, but it’s still a battle to make the changes that I can get to where I need to versus fighting against a bunch of different moving parts, which is a year ago why we made the changes.
“I still feel like there are some [holes] that I’m trying to get rid of,” Granderson said. “The main thing is looking at what went wrong. How did they get you out and what do we need to do to fix it, is it something that I did, did I chase a bad pitch or was it a good pitch that I just didn’t get to for some reason.”
Those are revealing words into the mindset of a hitter. Granderson does not put himself into the AL MVP talk, noting that Jose Bautista and Adrian Gonzalez are leading in that category.
Granderson remains ready to pounce on every pitch.
“That comes from being down and ready,” Granderson said of his changes. “Before I wasn’t able to do that, now I’m ready.”
And those amazing MVP-like numbers are proof.