The Leftie Left Fielder that Left Himself in Florida

by Harry Bro

Carl Crawford has to have been the biggest disappointment in all of Boston sports this year, if not the NBA lockout.  Boston's left-handed left-fielder has left most of his baseball prowess in St. Petersburg; perhaps he buried it in a time capsule under Tropicana Field.  Crawford, a huge investment made by Theo Epstein last offseason, is enormously important to the success of next year's team.  The sooner he returns to the Sunshine State and unearths his talents from their "time capsule", the sooner we can let go of the very real fear that his contract will become a huge burden to the franchise, a la what Vernon Wells' is to every team he plays for.  Pay for his flight down to St. Petersburg and you might turn the team into a powerhouse.

Statistical Analysis: How He's Been Bad

The obvious place to begin if you want to prove Crawford's incompetence this year is his offensive statistics.  The first stat you'll look at is batting average, the one that most baseball fans still regard as the most important in baseball and that you'll read first on the television screen.  A word of advice: read Moneyball by Michael Lewis (I've only read parts of it, but I got the message) and you'll change your mind.  Back to Crawford, take a look at the drop-off of his batting average from last year to this year:

2010: .307 in 657 at-bats
2011: .250 in 478 at-bats as of 9/11/11

This is a shocking drop off.  People expected a .300 hitter in Crawford when his signing was announced.    Instead, they've been treated to 50 points lower than that.  Crawford's power has gone.  So has his small amount of plate discipline.  He's rarely stealing bases.  He's rarely scoring runs or driving them in.  He likely to end this year with more doubles than he had last year, but his triples numbers are way, way down.  Crawford, from the games I've watched, (not as many as I should have) is always making cheap outs, grounding out, bouncing out, and occasionally lining out.  He's gone from being Tampa's offensive lighter fluid to being Boston's offensive poison.

His defense has fallen off a cliff and to a watery death in the Atlantic.  It's declined so much that it's difficult to speak of without disgust in your voice.  By the standards of fielding percentage, it has taken a very small turn for the worse, but his assist numbers (throwing) are way down, from 7 to (so far) 2.  But the most shocking statistic regarding his defense is his decline in FRAA, which has something to do with "Fielding Runs".  Baseball Prospectus, pretty much my baseball Bible, uses it to quantify defensive production.  Higher is better, lower is worse.  Want to know his decline from last year to this year (you really, truly don't)? Here you are.

2010: 10.4
2011: 0.2

Horrific.  Awful.  Even fraudulent.  Of course, some of this can be blamed on the fact that he doesn't know how to play the Monster yet, something evident in a lot of games.  His legs have deteriorated as well, as he has had hamstring issues this year that have visibly hampered his quickness and speed, as well as his willingness to go all out.  But the simple way to look at it is that his production has decreased on a massive scale this year and that has simply made him, and his mammoth contract, liabilities for now.  Note also that this statistic will almost certainly change going forward in the year, so it's not a final number.

Another well known stat in baseball now is WARP, which is Wins Above Replacement Level.  It's one of the easiest ways to quantify the bulk of a player's statistical production.  Crawford's drop-off from last year to this year has been just mind-boggling.  Again, higher is better, lower is worse.

2010: 6.8, which is big.
2011: 1.0 so far, and Baseball Prospectus' website predicts 1.3 for him by the season's end.

Makes you want to scream, cry, or smash your TV/radio, right? Maybe burn your box score? Yes, Crawford is frustrating.  Now, to an absolute million-dollar question: (about 1 fourteenth of Crawford's salary) why has he been so terrible?

Whatever Might Explain This: Why He's Been Bad

There are many reasons why.  I will list two:

1. His injuries.  Hamstring injuries that make you miss a lot of time are detrimental to any player.  For a speed player like Crawford whose best skills are centered around running, it can be crippling to a season.

2. Getting used to a new city, press, fanbase, style of play (stealing bases less), batting order spot, and ballpark (especially).  Crawford has had so many new things in his current situation that it may take him longer than one year to get used to them.  They have likely taken tolls on both his confidence and his on-field performance.

Solution, Please: How Will He Be Fixed?
If you could answer this question with absolute certainty that you were correct and that you could rectify the performance Carl Crawford, and the Red Sox believed you, you'd quickly have both an office in Fenway and a paycheck from the ownership (a hefty number, I would think.)  Personally I think (and others probably do as well) that he has to improve and rehab the health of his legs, change his offensive approach from his ineffective current style, and play the Monster a ton.  If he works, improves, thinks about his offense, practices, and rehabs, it's much more likely that next year we'll have Carl Crawford, and not his ghost.

See Crawford's diary for ESPN: http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/red-sox/post/_/id/14197/crawford-diary-sorry-for-the-year-ive-had

Sources: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/crawfca02.shtml and subsequent pages, http://www.baseballprospectus.com/card/card.php?id=CRAWFORD19810805A and subsequent pages. Some other sports reporting has given me ideas/helped me out in this article, for example a NESN broadcast conversation regarding his hamstring injury.  Inspiration from a variety of sources.