There’s usually a cause/effect relationship between a good line drive rate and a high BA. But it can be skewed by luck, especially in small sample sizes.
He has hit a few soft liners - his hard hit rate is far from elite - but even thise have an expected hit rate he’s just under. Soft liners land, too.
The guy is 2 for 24 on ground balls as well. That’s straight up unlucky. Weakly hit grounders can find holes. Really weak ones can be beat out for hit. Nothing like that is working for Grissom. (And a lot of that has been working for Dalbec, to whom he was compared in the original post.)
Of course, it’s only 65 PA. Most players with small sample sizes find themselves either lucky or unlucky…
It just seems like there's such a vast gulf between minor league pitching and major league pitching now. Guys can absolutely rake in AAA and when they're promoted it's like they've run into a brick wall. And when you look at Grissom's 2022 game log, he got off to a tremendous start, but at a certain point the pitchers seemed to figure him out.
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
He's was 21 and rushed to the bigs, of course they figured him out.
This by no means guarantees he will ever figure it out but it's way too early to start judging him too. I think as fans we expect players to just come up and immediately be good.
Progress is never linear, just look at how guys like Pedrioa, JBJ, and Duran broke into the bigs. Even a guy like Xander Bogaerts had a sophmore slump and took him over 600 ab's until he turned into the player he really was.
He just had a bad stretch for those last 5 games, which every hitter has. His BABIP splits were fairly normal at the end of that year, so it’s also arguable he started off very lucky and it just evened out over time. Basically, he was due for a slump. Given that he actually struck out much less in that slump than in the rest of the season, it does seem unlikely that pitchers suddenly figured him out. Just that stuff he hit that found grass the week before didn’t find any that week…
I'd say some of the expectations of Grissom were put on him by the organization. They traded Chris Sale for him and penciled him as the 2024 second baseman. We heard stories about how he was a star in the making.
How much of a leash are they prepared to give him in a season that supposedly matters?
With Hamilton suddenly hitting so well, they now have options.
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
We’re judging the guy after 65 PA and already calling him a failure (See Jeter Downs comp above). The 2007 ROY/2008 MVP Dustin Pedroia looked like crap for those first 98 PA in 2006 as well…
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
Pedroia benefited to some extent from having his adjustment period at the end of a lost 2006 season and then the first month of the 2007 season. Then he caught fire.
Championships since purchase by John Henry group: Red Sox 4 Yankees 1
The Red Sox are 8-1 in their last 9 postseason games against the Yankees.
What about it?
It covers parts of 3 seasons and about 150+ PA. His Stat Cast indicates he would have 1-2 HRs at Fenway in that stretch, but i think we expected him to be more than a 6 HR guy over a full season.
One issue with Grissom to date is he isn’t much of an exit velocity guy. And if you’re not going to hit the ball with authority, you do need to walk more than he does and probably strike out less.
But again - still SSS. Numbers spread across multiple seasons are not meaningless, but not necessarily representative since we don’t know if all other things (health, quality of opponent, etc.) are equal…