The Once and Future Grady

I think it’s pretty easy to forget how truly great Grady Sizemore was before he got hurt.  For one, it feels like it’s been so long since he’s been healthy: for nearly all of the 2009 and 2010 seasons, Grady was either on the DL or should have been.  It’s pretty clear that his health cost him major parts of the last two seasons.  On top of that, he had a really nice year in 2008, but the team imploded around him as Hafner fell off a cliff and CC was traded away.  So in some ways, we haven’t really seen Grady since 2007.

But even more than that, a good deal of Sizemore’s greatness always flew under the radar anyway.  His value was so evenly distributed among his defense, his bat, and his baserunning that people often overlooked how much he was contributing. 

Take a look at this chart that measures Sizemore’s Wins Above Replacement according to Fangraphs.com (fWAR):

From 2005 to 2008, only one AL position player amassed more wins above replacement for his team than Grady—Alex Rodriguez.  Considering that Rodriguez was paid about $85 million more than Grady over this period, it’s arguable that Grady was the single most valuable position-player in the American League in the years leading up to his injury.  I think that sometimes gets overlooked, even by those of us in Cleveland.

But now the question is not whether he was great, but whether he can ever approach those levels of production again.  Microfracture surgery is a pretty tricky business: the surgeon drills numerous holes into the tibia and femur to encourage new cartilage growth.  And while the procedure has a long history in the NBA, it is relatively new to Major League baseball.

So in digging around a bit, I found an article discussing microfracture’s effect on baseball players–especially from a fantasy perspective.  Here’s a snippet:

“First off, running will be a big issue (especially with microfracture to the Tibia or Femoral condyles) due to the surfaces being loaded and sheared. A player known for speed will likely see a dip in his stolen base totals if he is still having some discomfort upon return. If the player is not experiencing pain, and had a good surgical result, he should resume his base stealing ways.

The biggest issue will be hitting – period. The knees are obviously quite important in loading weight properly and transferring power during the swing. The lower leg undergoes torsion in relation to the thigh (Femur) – creating a sense of “grinding” in a cartilage-deficient knee.

Following microfracture, it is not uncommon for a player to feel hesitant to “let it rip” at the plate. Gradual batting drills and tee work leads up to soft toss and eventually batting practice in the cage, prior to any game-situation rehab assignments.”

That sounds…not so good. Especially the part about hitting: Grady’s stance is wide, and because he’s fairly slight of build, a good deal of his power would seem to derive from transferring his weight forward, causing the sort of “torsion” mentioned above.

Unfortunately, since microfracture is relatively new in MLB, there just aren’t a lot of great comparisons out there to be made.  Grady doesn’t have a lot of comps as it is, and none of them have undergone microfracture surgery at his age.  But there are three MLB players who’ve undergone the surgery that I could find, and I thought we’d look at their offensive performance both before and after the surgery, to see what kind of drop-off they experienced.

A few groundrules: (1) I’m using OPS+ to measure offensive production; it’s not a perfect tool, but for our purposes, it will work just fine.  You’ll remember that OPS+ is adjusted for position, ballpark, and year, and that 100 is exactly average. (2) “Pre-Surgery” is defined as the last three healthy seasons prior to surgery.  So if you had your surgery in 2007, “Pre-Surgery” will be defined as 2004-2006. (3) Post-surgery is only the first year back.  Here goes:

As you can see, Brian Giles actually improved coming off of surgery, posting a 137 OPS+ in 2008 compared to a 126 in the years leading up to the procedure.  The other two guys?  Not so much.  Both Chad Tracy and Sandy Alomar (a multiple microfracture patient, actually) saw their numbers drop after the procedure.

Obviously, we just don’t have enough players to conclude anything rational—three is hardly a sufficient sample size.  On the other hand, who ever accused me of being rational?  These three guys are really the only indication we have on how Grady’s offensive prowess will be affected, so I suppose it’s better than nothing.

Here are Grady’s numbers from 2006-2008 (I’m leaving out 2009 and 2010 because I believe he was injured both years.  (If you’d prefer to look at 2007-2009, well, the internet is free—have at it.):

So let’s call an OPS+ of 130 Grady’s “base” offensive season.  That means that, barring injury, he’s basically 30% better than the average AL centerfielder; for the record, his 130 OPS+ translated to an .879 unadjusted OPS over the same three year period.

Now let’s start chipping away at that value a little.  What if we take the three players as a guide, and assume that microfracture will cost Grady about a similar degree of his offensive value.  Let’s look at all three as an example, and then the composite value:

So it would appear that if things go as badly for Grady as possible, and he recovers as poorly as Chad Tracy did in 2008, that he’d still be slightly above average offensively (for a CFer).  If on the other hand, he actually gets better like Brian Giles did, he’ll experience one of the all-time great seasons for centerfielder.

Neither of those is particularly likely, of course.  With so few examples to build off, we’d be wise to, as the statisticians say, regress to the mean, which basically means to weight Sizemore’s previous production more highly than the effects that microfracture surgery may or may not have had on three other random dudes.  Basically, find the “real” Grady Sizemore, and assume that what’s more likely than anything is that he’ll come back.

The problem, of course, is twofold.  First, who is the real Grady Sizemore?  Was 2009 a product of injury or decline?  Until we can answer that, all projections are mere guesswork.  Here I assume that he was injured, but I have no reason to believe that other than hope for the future and his nagging hernia issue.  Second, will he be healthy next season?  Manny Acta suggested earlier this week that Grady will be his centerfielder “until I hear anything different.”  That’s reassuring.  I guess.

So long as Acta doesn’t hear anything different in the next few months, we might just get our best player back and producing at MVP levels (Choo’s best season by fWAR is far below Sizemore’s best, if you’re wondering).  This time, let’s make sure to take notice.