Season in review about nothing: Yasmani Grandal, ‘The Postponement.’

Yasmani Grandal

Dodgers catcher Yasmani Grandal made his first All-Star team in 2015. (Getty Images)

This is Part 17 of a series in which every member of the 2015 Dodgers has his season juxtaposed with an episode of the greatest sitcom of all-time. Don’t take it too seriously.

Yasmani Grandal, C.

Key stats: .234/.353/.403 slash line, 29% caught stealing rate, +1.74 strikes per game via pitch framing.

Seinfeld episode: “The Postponement” (season 7, episode 2).

Key quote: “He told you all that? How could he?”

A pair of poorly kept secrets were the bookends to Yasmani Grandal’s first season with the Dodgers. What happened in between was alternately spectacular and miserable.

First, the spectacular.

Grandal emerged from an undefined timeshare with A.J. Ellis to seize the starting catcher’s job in April. By August 6, he’d played in his first All-Star Game and was slashing .295/.400/.513. How impressive was that pace? No Dodger catcher had a higher batting average or slugging percentage in a full season since Paul LoDuca in 2001; Mike Piazza was the last Dodger catcher to post an on-base percentage above .400, back in 1997.

The Dodgers figured Grandal’s bat would come around when they acquired him as the centerpiece of a three-team trade that sent Matt Kemp to San Diego at last year’s Winter Meetings. The trade was briefly held up when Kemp’s physical revealed severe arthritis in both of his hips. (We’ll call that poorly-kept secret number 1.)

Less certain was how Grandal would fare in a crouch over a full season. He’d endured reconstructive surgery on his right knee after blowing out his ACL in July 2013. When he returned late in the 2014 season for the Padres, he still wasn’t able to pop out of the crouch as well as he could pre-surgery. To keep him fresh, the Padres rotated him in at first base. Grandal’s knee wasn’t a problem this year; in fact, his 29 percent caught-stealing rate was above the league average and a personal career high.

The problem was Grandal’s left shoulder. His swing took a turn for the miserable when the shoulder was injured during a road trip to Pennsylvania in August. Grandal said the damage was incurred when his shoulder was struck by a foul ball. Often, that’s an injury that takes innings, or days, to recover from. In Grandal’s case, he never recovered.

After the Dodgers got home from Pennsylvania, Grandal had 103 plate appearances, He had four hits (that’s not a typo) and a .049 batting average. His final slash line (.234/.353/.403) was really a tale of two seasons. The misery spilled over into the postseason, when he had one hit in 10 at-bats against the Mets.

Grandal never discussed the injury or how it affected him in any detail, but there was no question he wasn’t healthy — whether he answered the question or not. (We’ll call that poorly-kept secret number 2.) It was no surprise when Grandal had shoulder surgery after the season.

Speaking of poorly-kept secrets, Elaine had hers splashed all over television in “The Postponement.” When George gets engaged, Elaine becomes envious and confesses her feelings to a local rabbi. The rabbi proceeds to tell everyone with two ears, as the scriptwriters missed the opportunity to coin a great oxymoron: “rabbi-Gentile privilege.”

Did we mention the rabbi has a TV show?

Grandal is eligible for arbitration. Midnight tonight marks the deadline for teams to non-tender their arbitration-eligible players, and there’s no reason to expect Grandal will not sign at some point in the coming months if he doesn’t sign today. And if that doesn’t happen, there’s always the arbitrator.

Come spring training, Grandal’s MRIs should check out just fine when pitchers and catchers report. The question will be his swing. Did he pick up any poor habits over the final months of 2015, or can he snap back to the All-Star form he showed early in the season?

This was a question that hung over Kemp once a couple years ago, though his surgery was far more rigorous than Grandal’s. It seems these secrets have a way of coming full circle.

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About J.P. Hoornstra

J.P. Hoornstra covers the Dodgers, Angels and Major League Baseball for the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Torrance Daily Breeze, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News, San Bernardino Sun, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Whittier Daily News and Redlands Daily Facts. Before taking the beat in 2012, J.P. covered the NHL for four years. UCLA gave him a degree once upon a time; when he graduated on schedule, he missed getting Arnold Schwarzenegger's autograph on his diploma by five months.