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Denard Span On His Future

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It’s been nearly 20 months since Denard Span suited up in a big league game, and the former Twins, Nationals, Giants, Rays and Mariners outfielder suggests in an interview with Patrick Reusse of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he may not do so again. Span reveals that he received offers in the 2018-19 offseason, although they clearly weren’t compelling enough to leave his young family. Span adds that he worked out this winter with an eye toward a 2020 return and received “two or three” minor league offers — but they came from clubs without much of a path to the Majors even in the event that he played well in Triple-A.

“I haven’t announced it, officially, but maybe this is it,” Span said when asked about retirement. “…I still would have the ability to help a team. But 36-year-old outfielders who haven’t played in two years … not happening. I’m very satisfied pouring my life into our family, to Anne, a wonderful person, and our two boys.”

Denard Span | Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

If this is indeed it for the amiable Span, it’s been quite a strong career. A first-round pick out of high school by the Twins back in 2002, Span took nearly six years to ascend to the big leagues, but he made an immediate impact upon arrival. Twenty-four years old at the time, Span finished sixth in AL Rookie of the Year voting in 2008 and hit .294/.387/.432 (122 OPS+ and wRC+ alike) through 487 plate appearances, helping push the Twins to a dramatic Game 163 showdown with the White Sox. Minnesota fell in a crushing 1-0 loss to the South Siders, but Span had announced his presence in the big leagues and would never look back.

Over the next four seasons, Span was the consummate leadoff man in Minnesota, hitting a combined .283/.351/.381 with a nine percent walk rate and just an 11.5 percent strikeout rate. In addition to a knack for working counts and putting the ball in play, Span showed off well above-average baserunning skills and the ability to play plus defense wherever he was slotted into the outfield (center field, more often than not). Heading into the 2010 campaign, Span signed a five-year, $16.5MM contract extension that contained an option for an additional $9MM.

Span provided excellent value over the course of that contract, but he only spent half of it in a Twins uniform. As the Twins fell from their status as a perennial AL Central contender and moved into a rebuild, Span had two guaranteed years and the club option remaining on that highly appealing deal. Minnesota flipped him to the Nationals in a straight-up swap for then-vaunted pitching prospect Alex Meyer — a deal that proved regrettable for Minnesota after repeated shoulder injuries torpedoed Meyer’s career.

The Nats had no complaints, though, and that may have been the case even if Meyer had eventually developed into a quality big leaguer. Span hit .292/.345/.404 in three seasons with Washington, continuing to add value on the bases and in the field along the way. By the time he reached free agency, Span was solidified enough to command a three-year, $31MM contract from the Giants. Even as his glovework deteriorated — San Francisco didn’t help matters by continuing to play him in center for lack of a better option — Span remained solid at the plate. However, he played out the final year of that deal between his hometown Rays and the Mariners after the Giants sent him to Tampa Bay in the Evan Longoria trade.

All told, Span has logged 11 seasons in the Major Leagues and batted a combined .281/.347/.398 with 71 home runs, 265 doubles, 72 triples, 185 stolen bases (in 244 tries — 76 percent), 773 runs scored and 490 RBIs. He was never an All-Star despite a strong career that checked in at 28 wins above replacement per both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference — a likely result of the understated manner in which he brought value to his teams (on-base percentage, baserunning, defense).

Clubs clearly saw the value in Span, though, as he was a regular from the moment he debuted up through the end of the 2018 season, and he inked a pair of multi-year deals that helped propel his career earnings north of $58MM (including his draft bonus). Best wishes to Span moving forward, whatever the future holds.

The Mariners’ Future Payroll Promises

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2020 salary terms are set to be hammered out in the coming days. But what about what’s owed to players beyond that point? The near-term economic picture remains questionable at best. That’ll make teams all the more cautious with guaranteed future salaries.

Every organization has some amount of future cash committed to players, all of it done before the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe. There are several different ways to look at salaries; for instance, for purposes of calculating the luxury tax, the average annual value is the touchstone, with up-front bonuses spread over the life of the deal. For this exercise, we’ll focus on actual cash outlays that still have yet to be paid.

We’ll run through every team, with a big assist from the Cot’s Baseball Contracts database. Next up is the Mariners:

(click to expand/view detail list)

Mariners Total Future Cash Obligation: $115.45MM

*includes Yusei Kikuchi 2022 player option

*includes buyouts of club options

Which 15 Players Should The Mariners Protect In An Expansion Draft?

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In a few weeks, we’ll be running a two-team mock expansion draft here at MLBTR.  Currently, we’re creating 15-player protected lists for each of the existing 30 teams.  You can catch up on the rules for player eligibility here.

So far, we’ve done the Athletics, Angels, Astros, Twins, Royals, Tigers, Indians, White Sox, Rays, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, and Orioles.  The Mariners are next.

First, we’ll remove free agents Dee Gordon, Taijuan Walker, and Yoshihisa Hirano from consideration.  I’ve decided to lock down these 11 players out of the gate:

Mitch Haniger
Marco Gonzales
Evan White
Logan Gilbert
Justus Sheffield
Justin Dunn
Kyle Lewis
J.P. Crawford
Shed Long
Jake Fraley
Tom Murphy

That leaves four spots for the following 25 players:

Austin Adams
Dan Altavilla
Gerson Bautista
Braden Bishop
Brandon Brennan
Nestor Cortes
Carl Edwards Jr.
Kendall Graveman
Zac Grotz
Taylor Guilbeau
Sam Haggerty
Yusei Kikuchi
Tim Lopes
Matt Magill
Nick Margevicius
Dylan Moore
Austin Nola
Kyle Seager
Mallex Smith
Erik Swanson
Daniel Vogelbach
Donovan Walton
Art Warren
Taylor Williams
Patrick Wisdom

With that, we turn it over to the MLBTR readership! In the poll below (direct link here), select exactly four players you think the Mariners should protect in our upcoming mock expansion draft. Click here to view the results.

Create your own user feedback survey

How Seattle Acquired One Of Its Best Players

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While last season was an injury-shortened wreck for the Mariners’ Mitch Haniger, you can’t dispute that he’s a highly valuable outfielder when he’s able to take the field. Haniger came into his own during his first extensive action in 2017, and he was a deserving All-Star during the next season, in which he hit .285/.366/.493 (137 wRC+) with 26 home runs and 4.5 fWAR. With three years of control left, Haniger could either continue to serve as a key Mariner or re-emerge as a desirable trade chip, leaving the M’s in a good spot in both cases.

As for how Haniger became a Mariner, we can start by revisiting the 2011-12 offseason. Prolific slugger Prince Fielder, a Brewer from 2005-11, reached the open market after the last of those seasons. He was a Type A free agent, which is a concept that’s now extinct in the majors, but losing Fielder entitled the Brewers to a compensatory pick in the 2012 draft. They did indeed see Fielder depart, as he went to the Tigers on a nine-year, $214MM contract. That left the Brewers with the 38th overall pick, which they used on Haniger.

While Haniger was a decent minor league hitter at the lower levels in the Milwaukee organization, he never played in the majors with the Brewers. They instead traded Haniger and left-hander Anthony Banda (now a Ray) to the Diamondbacks at the July 2014 deadline for outfielder Gerardo Parra. The Brewers didn’t make the playoffs that year or the next one – Parra was on their roster both seasons – and they traded him to the Orioles for righty Zach Davies at the 2015 deadline. Davies was effective as a Brewer from 2015-19, though they dealt him to the Padres in a four-player swap that delivered infielder Luis Urias and lefty Eric Lauer to Milwaukee over the offseason.

So, in the wake of the Parra trade, how did Haniger end up in Seattle? Let’s go back to November 2016, when the D-backs sent him, infielder Jean Segura and righty Zac Curtis to the Mariners in a blockbuster trade for infielder/outfielder Ketel Marte and righty Taijuan Walker. Segura’s now a member of the Phillies, who acquired him from the M’s in a December 2018 that brought shortstop J.P. Crawford and some guy named Carlos Santana to Seattle (though Santana never played for the club). Marte has turned into a superstar in Arizona, meanwhile, Walker’s now back in Seattle after a couple injury-ruined years in the desert, and Curtis is out of baseball.

This goes to show how much one team’s decision – in this case, the Brewers letting Fielder go in free agency – can affect the league. Had the Brewers simply re-signed Fielder, which was out of the question for the low-budget team, you never know what would have happened to any of the aforementioned clubs or players. Milwaukee’s inability to keep Fielder did lead Haniger to Seattle, which is no doubt pleased to have him in the fold for at least the next few seasons, but it did lose Marte when it acquired him.

Remembering A Dodgers Heist

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As a versatile defender and a capable offensive player, Chris Taylor has been one of many eminently useful members of the Dodgers’ roster since 2017. But Taylor’s career did not begin in ideal fashion. A fifth-round pick of the Mariners in 2012, Taylor peaked as Baseball America’s ninth-ranked M’s prospect in 2014, and though he reached the majors for the first time that year, it took him a few years to come into his own.

Taylor showed off almost zero pop early in his big league career, evidenced by his one home run and .076 isolated power number across 318 plate appearances through 2016. Taylor had plenty of high moments in the Mariners’ minor league system, where he hit .314/.401/.455 in 1,856 PA, but could only muster a measly line of .240/296/.296 (71 wRC+) in the majors. Consequently, general manager Jerry Dipoto – who did not draft Taylor – gave him up in June 2016, sending him to the Dodgers for right-hander Zach Lee.

At the time of the Seattle-LA deal, MLBTR’s Mark Polishuk wrote, “Given Taylor’s impressive minor league numbers, it’s not out of the question that he could unlock some of that hitting prowess in the bigs.”

Mark couldn’t have been more right. Taylor saw little time with the Dodgers in his first year with the organization (just 62 PA), but he became a regular for the club the next season and has been an integral part of the perennial contenders’ roster since then. Going back to 2017, Taylor has slashed .268/.340/.468 (116 wRC+) with 50 homers and 9.6 fWAR, all while making relatively minimal salaries. Taylor’s still under affordable control through 2021, so as someone who can hit and play just about every position (he has lined up at second, third, short and all three outfield spots in LA), it should be a no-brainer for the Dodgers to keep him in the fold for at least the next couple years.

While the Dodgers struck gold on Taylor, the Mariners got nothing out of this swap. Lee entered the pro ranks as the 28th overall pick of the Dodgers in 2010, deciding to try for a baseball career instead of playing football at LSU. Signing the former quarterback cost the Dodgers a franchise-record bonus of $5.25MM, and Lee lived up to the hype for a little while. He was among Baseball America’s top 100 prospects three times (2011, ’12 and ’14), but Lee had an up-and-down minor league run as a Dodger and made just one appearance with the big club. In a 15-2 loss to the Mets in July 2015, Lee yielded seven earned runs on 11 hits in 4 2/3 innings. That was the only time he took the mound as a Dodger.

So what has become of Lee since the Mariners acquired him? Well, he had a fleeting run in the Seattle org, which lost him on waivers to San Diego in December 2016. Lee has since been with three other franchises – the Rays, Mets and Athletics (the A’s signed him to a minors pact this past offseason). He’s still just 28, and as a former high-end prospect, it may be too soon to give up on Lee. However, as the owner of a 5.41 ERA over 625 1/3 innings in Triple-A ball, it seems unlikely he’ll amount to much in the majors. Considering how Lee’s pro career has gone thus far, the Dodgers have to be thrilled with the return they got for him.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

An Unpopular Trade Paying Off In Seattle

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The Mariners’ rebuild began in earnest following a disappointing finish to the 2018 season, when GM Jerry Dipoto first began talk of re-imagining his roster. The M’s have added a bevy of prospects since that time, highlighted by Jarred Kelenic and Justus Sheffield, but one of their most important long-term pieces was acquired on July 21 in 2017, when the club was still aiming for immediate contention.

That day saw Seattle trade slugging minor league outfielder Tyler O’Neill to the Cardinals in exchange for left-hander Marco Gonzales. The now-28-year-old Gonzales has become a fixture in the rotation, but the trade wasn’t exactly well-received among M’s fans at the time. The club was below .500 but just 1.5 games back from a Wild Card spot at the time of the swap. Dipoto had been trying to acquire young pitching, hoping to add to his core while also remaining competitive in a top-heavy American League. (The 85-win Twins claimed the league’s second Wild Card position that year.)

Marco Gonzales | Thomas B. Shea-USA TODAY Sports

The consensus among Mariners fans at the time of the swap was, essentially, “Why would they do this?” Social media reactions to the deal weren’t favorable, and looking through the comments on the trade’s writeup at MLBTR, FanGraphs or most other sites reveals a similarly perplexed set of replies. O’Neill had entered that year as one of the game’s 100 best prospects and the second-best in the Mariners organization, while Gonzales had made just one appearance in the Majors since returning from 2016 Tommy John surgery. He was having a nice season in Triple-A, but most scouting reports on him pegged Gonzales as a mid-rotation arm, at best. In addition to that Tommy John surgery, he battled shoulder troubles in 2015.

Injury risk or not, Dipoto was undeterred. The Mariners’ GM spoke the day before the trade about only being willing to deal from his premium prospects if it meant acquiring a long-term rotation piece, and days after the swap he called Gonzales “about as big-league-ready as a Triple-A pitcher could be.” Sure enough, Gonzales was in the big leagues less than three weeks later.

The initial results did little to assuage the concerns of Seattle fans. Gonzales pitched just 36 2/3 innings of 5.40 ERA ball down the stretch as the Mariners again fell shy of the postseason. O’Neill hit .253/.304/.548 with a dozen homers in 37 Triple-A games following the trade that year. On-base questions notwithstanding, the power was still impressive and Mariners fans were skeptical of the lefty for whom O’Neill had been shipped out.

Despite that lackluster showing, Gonzales opened the 2018 season in the Seattle starting five. His early work didn’t inspire much confidence, but after four shaky starts, Gonzales settled into a groove and pitched to a 3.60 ERA over his final 150 innings, averaging 7.6 K/9 and 1.7 BB/9 along the way. In 2019, Gonzales posted a 3.99 ERA that was nearly identical to his 4.00 ERA from 2018 — but he did it in a larger sample of 203 frames.

Setting aside his rocky debut in 2018, Gonzales has given the Mariners 369 2/3 frames of 3.99 ERA ball with an even better 3.83 FIP, 7.1 K/9, 2.1 BB/9, 0.97 HR/9 and a 42.5 percent ground-ball rate. From 2018-19, he was worth 6.0 bWAR and 7.1 fWAR. The rebuilding Mariners made clear that they view Gonzales as a core piece back in February, signing the southpaw to a four-year, $30MM contract extension (2021-24) that also contains a $15MM club option for the 2025 season.

The trade would likely look like a solid one for the Mariners even if O’Neill had blossomed into an everyday corner outfielder. That hasn’t happened yet, however. While Gonzales was solidifying himself in the Mariners’ rotation, O’Neill was bouncing back and forth between Triple-A and St. Louis, hitting a combined .258/.307/.454 with 14 home runs in 293 plate appearances. The power has been good but not elite, and O’Neill’s contact struggles have indeed been magnified against MLB pitching; he’s punched out 110 times in those 293 plate appearances (37.5 percent).

To be fair to O’Neill, he hasn’t exactly been given a real opportunity to win an everyday job. Just months after he was traded to St. Louis, the Cardinals went out and acquired two years of control over Marcell Ozuna in a trade that sent Sandy Alcantara, Zac Gallen and Magneuris Sierra to the Marlins. With Ozuna, Dexter Fowler, Tommy Pham (in 2018) and Harrison Bader all logging considerable time in the St. Louis outfield, opportunities for O’Neill have been sparse. But the very fact that the Cards felt it necessary to pursue a Giancarlo Stanton acquisition and then pull off a deal for Ozuna speaks to some level of question in O’Neill’s readiness.

The Cards didn’t add a left fielder to replace the departing Ozuna this winter, but they also have uber-prospect Dylan Carlson nearing the Majors. Even if Carlson seizes an outfield spot, the likely implementation of the universal DH will give O’Neill some additional opportunities to get into the lineup, so perhaps he’ll finally get the chance to justify the deal from the St. Louis end. The Cards haven’t exactly been hurting for pitching even without Gonzales in the fold, but there’s no denying he’s been the more valuable piece of the straight-up swap to this point.

The Gonzales/O’Neill trade won’t be looked back upon as any time of blockbuster, but it offers some reminders when judging future trades:

  • Prospect rankings are useful and entertaining, but it’s easy to overemphasize them. Prospect values are in a constant state of flux. Even a few weeks and certainly a couple months can change the opinion on a prospect. Whether it’s adding a new pitch, adding/losing velocity, outgrowing a position, altering mechanics at the plate or any number of other changes a player can exhibit, a prospect’s value can alter in a hurry.
  • It’s too easy to write off post-hype prospects. Gonzales himself was a first-round pick and top-100 prospect prior to injury troubles. At the time of the O’Neill trade, he was less than two years removed from ranking as the game’s No. 50 prospect, per Baseball America. A recent top prospect with some big league experience and four to five years of control is generally still a valuable piece even if he’s not a star. MLBTR’s Connor Byrne recently looked at another player fitting this mold: Pittsburgh’s Joe Musgrove.
  • Position scarcity matters. We’ve seen corner outfielders and first baseman go for smaller returns on the trade market and in free agency in recent seasons. Part of the Mariners’ calculus was surely that a corner outfielder with some on-base questions was easier to come by than an affordable mid-rotation starter, even if the latter carried considerably more risk.

In some regards, the end result of this trade is common. “Team gets one of its best pitchers by trading away key prospect” is hardly a unique storyline in baseball, but the manner in which the Mariners went about this particular instance of that narrative isn’t typical. The result speaks for itself right now, though. And while O’Neill can still change how we look at the deal in the long run, it’s worked out about as well as the Mariners could’ve hoped.

MLB Teams Preparing Employment Reductions Beginning In June

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Major League Baseball teams are preparing for major changes to their operations beginning at the start of June. Most had previously committed to paying employees in full through the end of May.

The Marlins are preparing to furlough approximately two of every five members of their operations department, per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (Twitter links). It’s not clear precisely which employees will be impacted. The Marlins are still committing to continuing health benefits through October.

Per Rosenthal, quite a few other teams around the game are also preparing for modifications at the start of the new month. Every organization is free to handle its own internal staffing decisions as it sees fit. Commissioner Rob Manfred previously gave authorization to suspend the basic agreements of salaried employees.

The Mariners are also planning cuts, but will be taking a different approach. Per The Athletic’s Corey Brock, the Seattle organization is planning a twenty percent paycut for employees whose salaries check in at or above the $60K level. The hope there is to avoid taking anyone off the books entirely.

Even as MLB negotiates player salaries and other matters in advance of a hopeful resumption of play in 2020, all involved understand that revenue will fall well shy of original expectations. There’s no real hope of playing before spectators this year and it still remains to be seen just what’ll be possible even for television-only games.

A Seattle Signing That Didn’t Work Out In 2019

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Japanese left-hander Yusei Kikuchi entered the majors with quite a bit of fanfare heading into the 2019 season. At that point, Kikuchi was coming off a terrific eight-year tenure as a member of Nippon Professional Baseball’s Seibu Lions, with whom he posted a 2.77 ERA and put up 8.0 K/9 against 3.3 BB/9 across 1,010 2/3 innings. Kikuchi parlayed that run into a high-paying contract with the Mariners, who signed him to a four-year, $56MM guarantee. It’s an unusual deal – one that could keep him in Seattle for as few as three years and as many as seven, as MLBTR’s Jeff Todd and Steve Adams explained at the time.

For now, the Mariners may be disappointed in their investment. Kikuchi struggled mightily during his first major league season, and there don’t seem to be many clear reasons to expect a turnaround. Starting with some optimism, it’s nice that Kikuchi amassed 161 2/3 innings, approaching the career-high 163 2/3 he accrued during an NPB season. But while Kikuchi ranked a respectable 59th in innings last year, he wasn’t very productive otherwise.

Among 70 pitchers who threw at least 150 frames, Kikuchi ranked last in FIP (5.71) and home runs per nine (2.00), second from the bottom in ERA (5.46) and 10th last in K/BB ratio (2.32; 6.46 K/9 against 2.78 BB/9). And the 28-year-old wasn’t effective against either lefties or righties. Same-handed hitters recorded a .340 weighted on-base average against him, meaning Kikuchi essentially turned lefties into the 2019 version of Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager. Righties, meanwhile, averaged a lofty .374 mark – the same number Astros second baseman Jose Altuve registered during the season.

So why was Year 1 such a disaster for Kikuchi? Well, as you’d expect, none of his pitches graded out well. According to Statcast, Kikuchi mostly relied on a four-seam fastball (49 percent), a slider (28 percent) and a curveball (15 percent). FanGraphs ranked all of those offerings among the worst of their kind, making it no surprise that so many hitters teed off on him. With that in mind, it’s hardly a shock that Kikuchi ranked toward the basement of the majors in a slew of important Statcast categories, finishing in the league’s 35th percentile or worse in exit velocity, hard-hit rate, expected ERA and expected wOBA, to name a few.

Had Kikuchi gotten off to a slow start and then made a late charge, it would be easier to have some hope going into this season. It was essentially the opposite, though, as Kikuchi owned a passable 4.37 ERA/4.51 FIP through April and then went in the tank from there. His monthly FIP only dipped below 5.00 once after the season’s first month, and it exceeded the 6.00 mark overall after the All-Star break.

In terms of performance from a hyped pitcher, it’s tough to make a much worse first impression than Kikuchi’s from 2019. That doesn’t mean he’ll never amount to anything in the majors – you have to sympathize with someone trying to adjust to a new country and the best baseball league in the world, after all. However, it’s not easy to find encouraging signs from Kikuchi’s first year in the majors, which is not what the rebuilding, long-suffering Mariners had in mind when they took a gamble on him in free agency.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

Servais: Mariners Encouraged By Progress Of Young Arms This Spring

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  • While Spring Training impressions were limited due to the mid-March shutdown, the Mariners were still encouraged by the progress demonstrated by some expected key players, manager Scott Servais said this week on MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM (Twitter link, with audio). In particular, lefty Justus Sheffield and righties Justin Dunn and Logan Gilbert looked to have taken notable strides. Sheffield, the centerpiece of the Mariners’ James Paxton return, allowed two runs on five hits and no walks with 12 punchouts in eight spring innings. Dunn, acquired alongside Jarred Kelenic in the Robinson Cano/Edwin Diaz blockbuster, whiffed 10 hitters in six innings while holding opponents to two runs in 6 2/3 frames. Gilbert, Seattle’s first-rounder in 2018, pitched four shutout innings with four strikeouts, no walks and one hit. The M’s are hopeful that this trio can soon ascend to the big league rotation alongside Marco Gonzales as the organization emerges from an accelerated rebuilding process. There’s clearly more to the belief that strides were made than those surface-level stats, but the trio’s showing nevertheless was heartening for Mariners fans.

Has Seattle Found Its Solution At Short?

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He’s still only 25, but if you go back to his days as a prospect, Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford was seen as an elite young talent. Crawford was the 16th overall pick of the Phillies in 2013, and Baseball America ranked him as the sixth-best farmhand in the sport after the 2015 season.

“At his best, he has a future as an all-star shortstop who can play above-average defense and hit for power,” BA wrote.

Crawford, however, hasn’t realized that vast potential with either organization he has played for to this point. Injuries did play a part in derailing Crawford’s tenure with the Phillies, but even when he was healthy enough to take a major league field from 2017-18, he put together an unspectacular line of .214/.333/.358 with three home runs in 225 plate appearances. Having seen enough, the Phillies dealt Crawford to the Mariners in December 2018 in what was a rather noteworthy trade. The retooling Mariners gave up infielder Jean Segura and relievers Juan Nicasio and James Pazos in order to acquire Crawford and first baseman Carlos Santana.

There’s no more Santana in Seattle – the team flipped him to Cleveland before he ever donned an M’s uniform – so the deal was largely about finding a long-term answer at shortstop. For at least some portion of last season, it looked as the Mariners were on to something. Crawford came flying out of the gates after debuting with the Mariners in the first half of last May, but his production plummeted after June.

In each of July, August and September, Crawford posted a wRC+ of less than 65. With an overall mark of 63 in the second half of the season, he was the third-worst offensive player in baseball, logging a .188/.288/.299 line in 229 trips to the plate. Crawford did draw walks (11.8 percent) and limit strikeouts (18.8) better than the average hitter then, though a .224 batting average on balls in play down the stretch didn’t help his cause. However, Crawford largely brought the low BABIP on himself with a lack of meaningful contact. According to FanGraphs, Crawford finished with the majors’ second-highest soft-contact rate (26 percent) and its third-worst hard-contact percentage (24.1). Statcast wasn’t impressed, either, as it placed Crawford in the basement of the league in important offensive categories such as average exit velocity, expected weighted on-base average and barrel percentage, to name a few.

The biggest roadblock the left-handed Crawford faced in 2019 was his inability to do anything against same-handed hurlers, who turned him into one of the worst hitters in the league. He batted an awful .160/.268/.179 with a stunningly low .019 ISO against them, but a much more palatable .255/.333/.456 with a .201 ISO versus righties. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time Crawford has run into that type of trouble, evidenced in part by the fact that he has never hit a single homer off a lefty during 144 tries in his career, and he’s a lifetime .144/.272/.171 batter against them. To state the obvious, that’s not going to cut it.

Crawford’s going to have to major strides against southpaws in order to amount to anything more than a platoon player in the majors. And it’s not as if he has shown he’s a defensive wizard whose work at short will cover for his flaws at the plate. Through almost 1,100 innings (including 806 a season ago), he has put up minus-9 Defensive Runs Saved and a minus-1.7 Ultimate Zone Rating.

The good news is that there’s still time for Crawford to figure it out. He’s controllable for five more years, and the Mariners don’t look as if they’ll contend for at least the next season or two, so they can afford to be patient with Crawford. So far, though, Crawford hasn’t shown many signs that he’ll live up to the hype he garnered as a prospect.

Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.

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