Yasmani Grandal led the entire American League in on-base percentage during the month of May with a whopping .467 OBP, trailing only Nick Castellanos (.476) throughout the majors (min. 50 plate appearances). Yasmani Grandal also ranked second to last in the American League in batting average, recording just six hits in 44 at-bats for a paltry .136 average.
Wait, what? Don't hits factor into on-base percentage as well? Isn't it kind of odd that every other batter in the league's top-40 on-base percentages from May is batting at least .200, with the majority of the top-25 batting well over .300? I guess that's what happens when you walk 29 times in a single month, tops in baseball, which is exactly what Grandal did.
If you're a frequent peruser of Twitter's baseball community, you'll know that Jeremy Frank always brings out the best in terms of weird and wild statistics. As per usual, he had some interesting tidbits on the matter.
Here's another fun factoid: had Grandal not recorded a single hit and gone 0-44 in all of his at-bats, his on-base percentage would still have been .387, which would have been tied with Ian Happ and Juan Soto as a top-40 figure. Let me say that again. Yasmani Grandal could have gone 0-44 and batted .000, and would still have had a better on-base percentage in May than the large majority of the league. He could have put up a complete goose egg in the hit and batting average column, which is an impressive feat in itself given most other players would be benched, and his OBP would have been higher than, oh, names like Mike Trout, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Mookie Betts.
Forget the year of the pitcher. Grandal just brought us the month of the walker.
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