Alexander Wilson
The New York Yankees beat the Kansas City Royals 4-2 on Friday night, and Ryan McMahon’s opposite-field home run in the eighth inning ended up being the difference. It was exactly the kind of moment the Yankees have been waiting for from their third baseman all season, and it came at the right time. The win was good. The Grisham situation remains complicated.
Grisham went 0-for-4 and committed an error in center field on a ball that bounced off his palm in the sixth inning, which handed the Royals a run they had no business scoring.
Fortunately, it didn’t end up on the wrong side of the ledger. But as a player who is supposed to be the leadoff man for a team with World Series ambitions, going hitless and making a costly defensive mistake in the same game is not what the Yankees need from that roster spot right now.
What the Numbers Actually Show
Here is the thing about Grisham, though. He’s hitting .145/.303/.290 on the year, and while that batting average is legitimately difficult to defend, everything underneath it suggests he’s playing considerably better baseball than that surface line indicates. His Statcast numbers rank him in the 94th percentile or better in hard-hit rate, chase rate, and walk rate. He is doing the things a leadoff hitter is supposed to do at an elite level. He’s getting on base through walks when the hits aren’t falling. He’s laying off bad pitches at one of the best rates in baseball. He’s making hard contact when he does swing.
The problem is the bat speed, which has regressed noticeably this season and is limiting his ability to get to pitches he should be driving. When bat speed drops, hitters tend to get late on fastballs and foul off pitches they used to punish. That’s a big part of why the hard contact hasn’t been converting into hits at the rate you’d expect given how well he’s controlling the zone. It’s something to watch over the next few weeks because if it doesn’t recover, the unlucky narrative starts carrying less weight.
That said, the walk rate and plate discipline metrics are elite enough that a turnaround is almost certain at some point. A hitter with a 94th percentile hard-hit rate who is also walking at that clip is not a broken player. He’s a player going through one of the worst stretches of variance in baseball right now, and variance corrects itself. The Yankees know that, which is why they haven’t considered moving him out of the leadoff spot despite weeks of disappointing results.
Why the Yankees Are Right to Ride It Out
Grisham’s underlying profile is too good to abandon him in mid-April. The metrics say he’s doing almost everything right. The results say something different. When those two things are this far apart, you trust the metrics because they reflect actual skill while the results reflect a mix of skill and luck, and right now the luck has been historically bad.
Not to mention, the Yankees don’t have a clear alternative at the top of the order who is performing better and making the decision obvious. Their options at the leadoff spot right now are limited, and Grisham’s combination of plate discipline and on-base skills still makes him the best fit for that role even in a cold stretch.
The error on Friday was the more concerning thing if it becomes a trend. His defense in center is usually a strength, and one ugly play doesn’t define that. But the Yankees need him to be the player his metrics say he is, and they’re going to have to keep believing that version is coming until the results catch up.
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