Milwaukee Brewers: Yasmani Grandal’s 2019 Season Report Card

The Milwaukee Brewers going into this season were looking for more production behind the plate.  With Manny Pina having spotty performances, Erik Kratz not being re-signed and Jacob Nottingham not seeming to be ready whenever he gets the chance, Milwaukee had some thinking to do.

This past winter, the Milwaukee Brewers took a chance on free agent catcher Yasmani Grandal and signed him to play catcher for them this season.

Now let’s take a dive in to his 2019 season.

Regular Season Batting:  B+

Brewers’ fans saw Yasmani Grandal have a season that they normally don’t see when it comes to catchers playing in Milwaukee. Grandal supported a slash line of .246/.380/.468 with a career highs of 28 homers and 77 runs batted in.

The negative news is that Yaz also set a career high in strikeouts (139) and tied a career high in grounding into double plays (16).

There were many moments where Grandal has come up clutch, also. He had a game-tying home run in the bottom of the eighth against the Cubs in Milwaukee back in early September and his first inning, first pitch home run in the Wild Card game in DC off of Max Scherzer.

When Christian Yelich went down for the season with his kneecap injury, Grandal stepped up and played a big role down the stretch in taking this team to the playoffs.

Regular Season Fielding:  B/C+

The reason there are two grades is because we saw Yaz not only play catcher, but also had some time at first base.

Grandal gets a “B” for the catching position because he still had his demons with passed balls.  But, he did have only eight errors behind the dish and had a fielding percentage of .993 in 137 games (124 games started).

Now Yaz playing first base is a little different because he may have had one error but he still could not go the extra mile to make any risky plays to get the out.  That is why he gets a “C+”.  Although, he did have a .992 fielding percentage at first. He was simply average at first base, nothing spectacular, nothing  terrible.

Overall Grade:  B+

Grandal did make the make catcher position a threat in Milwaukee; something it hasn’t been in a long time since the days of Jonathan Lucroy.  The last month of the first half, Yaz even batted in the lead-off spot for manager, Craig Counsell.

Bringing back Yaz would be a huge plus for the Brewers as he is now a free agent once the postseason comes to an end.

Milwaukee Brewers GM David Stearns said in his end of season press conference that he would like to have Grandal back, but also the chances of that happening will be determined by how the market develops for him.