Series Breakdown: Yasmani Grandal

For this series, I looked at Yasmani Grandal from June 29-July 2 as the Carolina Mudcats took on the Tennessee Smokies. Grandal went 3-12 with a double, HR and 4 strikeouts during the games covered. Here is how he fared, pitch by pitch in the series:

Breakdown of the plate approach

Grandal took 21 pitches in the series, 12 were balls and 9 were called strikes. He swung at the ball 21 times in the series. The ball was put in play 8 times, fouled off 6 times and he missed 5 times. Two of the foul balls were hammered down the lines and his HR was a blast.

It is tough to say that there is a weakness to a certain pitch when he only saw 40 pitches in the series, but he did struggle against the change up in this one. It was only a total of four pitches, so you can’t really take much from it at all. Toss in the fact that he hits from both sides of the plate and he may have weaknesses from each side and it gets even more difficult to figure out in a small sample size. But, nothing really stood out as a glaring weakness as a pitch he can’t handle.

My overall impression was that he has some good pop in his bat when he barrels that ball up. As noted, his HR was pretty long and he did crush two foul balls. He looked pretty solid from both sides of the plate and I can see where scouts suggest he has more raw power from the left side than the right side. I think he still needs to work on his gameplan to approach each plate appearance, but that is to be expected at his age, especially at the level he is at compared to his age. He is patient to a fault at times, but was also very aggressive early in the count a few times on pitchers pitches.

I will be honest, I didn’t watch every inning that he caught in the games, but I did watch some of them. Defensively, he seems fine to me. His arm was solid and on target with an average to slightly above average pop time. Seems to have good movements behind the plate and the catching seemed good.