Bill James Bullish On Carl Crawford In 2012

November 19th, 2011

Carl Crawford‘s disastrous first season in Boston has been well documented. Crawford hit just .255/.289/.405 in his first year in Boston with 11 HR’s and just 18 SB’s in 539 PA’s. He was booed constantly and just never really seemed to find himself.

We have written about $100 million free agents and their first-year struggles before. Crawford was no different than Jayson Werth, Carlos Beltran, or Alfonso Soriano in the first year of their contracts.

However, just because a player struggled in his first season, doesn’t mean he can’t rebound in the following season or seasons. The legendary Bill James has recently released his first round of projections for the 2012 season and he fully projects Crawford to have a bounce-back 2012 season.

Here are his projections for Crawford: .286/.332/.436 with 15 HR’s and 34 SB’s. That’s still nowhere near his monster 2010 season, but closely resembles his 2005 season when he hit .301/.331/.469 with 15 HR’s and 46 SB’s.

I don’t think Crawford will ever live up to his contract, but he should be and will be better in 2012. Not because Bill James says so, but because he can’t get much worse than he was in 2011.

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By The Baseball Index

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2 Responses to “Bill James Bullish On Carl Crawford In 2012”

  1. daveminnj says:
    November 20, 2011 at 8:49 am

    cold weather injuries in boston (a net minus);
    less dog-days-of-summer-in-florida exhaustion (a net gain);
    the expectations will never be as overwhelming as they were
    in 2011 (big net gain). i think crawford can do some real
    damage next year, but calf and hamstring injuries trump
    everything else.

    2 questions i was wondering about–what was crawford’s pitches-per-at-bat # and how did it rank?

    his appalling obp–has anyone at this stage in his career ever changed his walk ratio
    in order to do a rickey henderson and get that extra 20 runs scored and drive pitchers and catchers insane?

  2. The Baseball Index says:
    November 20, 2011 at 7:04 pm

    Interesting question you ask about Crawford’s Pitches/PA. Crawford averaged 3.89 pitches/PA, which was the highest of his career. His 3.89 pitches/PA was actually higher than Adrian Gonzalez’s.

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