Your 2012 Giants: Crawford on the Rise

We all can see that Brandon Belt finally had his epiphany (and great batting mechanics once he changed his stance per the team's instruction; I wrote a little on this at DrB) but it is harder to see changes for other players who are not as gifted offensively as Belt, like with Crawford, so I wanted to point him out today.

Giants Thoughts

His batting line is still nothing to write home about, slightly better than last season, mainly due to his higher batting average, which pushed up his SLG, and thus his OPS improved from .584 last season to its current .609, in roughly the same PA (220 vs. 226 so far).  However, I noticed a big change recently that hopefully is a sign that he's putting things together now, much like Belt.

One good thing about his bat last season was that he did not strike out that much.  He had an 84% contact rate (85%+ is good) and a 0.74 BB/K ratio, which is pretty good too (best are around or over 1.0).

However, he started out this season walking much less.  He had 10 K's and only 2 BB's in 66 AB/69 PA when he was semi-benched to fix his mechanics.  He was hitting .212/.235/.348/.584 at that point, much like last season, but nothing like where he was at the end of the season.  After coming back up to the majors for the September call-ups, he hit .256/.333/.419/.752 with a .278 BABIP and 5 BB vs. 6 K's in 43 AB, for a 86% contact rate and 0.8 BB/K ratio, both very good.   That earned him the starting job for 2012.

So the Giants worked to get him back to where he was at the end of last season (he also did well in the AFL too).  He sucked even more during that benching period, .133/.133/.200/.333 with 5 K's in 15 AB with no walks, as he went into explicit learning mode.

He initially did really well after he returned to full-time play, but that relied on a high BABIP to keep aloft, .290/.375/.355/.730 with .462 BABIP and still a lot of strikeouts still, 24 K's in 62 AB (16 games to May 25th).  He sooned fell back to earth and out of the #2 spot that he had done well in for a while.

He struggled and hit bottom on June 10th, batting .152/.220/.196/.416 but with an improvement in K-rate, like I noted with Belt in the link above, as he only had 8 K's in 46 AB, he was back to being as good as last season, only suffering from poor BABIP (.184) again.  In then in the 6 games (4 starts) since, he has hit .400/.438/.600/1.038 with only 1 K and 1 BB in 15 ABs, which is great batting peripherals.  

And the switchover happened somewhere around the start of the month.  For the month of June, he is hitting .277/.346/.383/.729 with a .310 BABIP (so it could be sustainable) and 4 BB and only 5 K (in 47 AB) for a 89% contact rate and 0.80 BB/K ratio, both good.   Given that stretch of strikeouts early in the month though, I would say the change happened around June 4th:  he has hit .268/.302/.366/.668 since then, with only 3 K's and 2 BB in 41 AB (43 PA).  


That is not bad for where the Giants are using Crawford.  .268/.302/.366/.668 is about average for a #8 hitter and doable for an average shortstop.  The average NL SS has a batting line of 258/.311/.383/.694.    But the average #8 hitter has a .241/.308/.366/.675 batting line.  So he is very close on both counts and hopefully his good hitting skein continues and brings him above both averages.

So while Crawford's improvement is not as noticeable as Belt's hot hitting, he has been improving by leaps and bounds this month, just not as noticeable until the past week, much like Belt, really.  If he can hit somewhere in the high 600's OPS and low 700's OPS while putting the ball in play a lot while also picking up a good number of walks, and on top of that, providing great defense, the Giants would be very happy.    They probably would be happy with mid-600's OPS as well, with his glove.