Dodgers: Infield grades for the month of April

Yasmani has had an up and down season to start the year. He hasn’t exactly lived up to the breakout expectations that we thought he might have coming into the season, but he hasn’t been awful at the same time.

Grandal is hitting a mere .215 with 3 home runs and 8 RBI. The average is never expected out of Grandal, so the fact that his average is in the low .200’s isn’t surprising. What I can say that has been disappointing has been his power outage. With only a .380 slugging percentage, Grandal’s power numbers are down dramatically, and that’s a little concerning.

Another disappointing part of Grandal’s game is that he still has yet to improve as against lefties. Last season Grandal hit .224 and only had 4 home runs through the entire season. This season, it’s still bad. He’s hitting .120 with only one home run in 29 at-bats.

What helped Grandal’s grade is his durability as a catcher, as he’s started 25 out of the 29 games for the Dodgers this season. In those 25 starts, Grandal has also been a beast as the second half of the battery. Grandal has thrown out seven out of the eight baserunners to start the season and has a team-leading defensive rating of 4.7. Outside of doing a stellar job managing the pitching staff, Grandal has locked down runners when trying to gain an extra base against our pitchers.

At times he’s allowed an occasional pass ball/wild pitch get away due to his attempt to pitch frame every pitch, he’s still one of the best defensive catchers in the league. Despite the slow start to the season offensively, Grandal brings consistent production on the defensive side of the plate to perhaps one of the most important positions on the field.