The Seattle Mariners made a weird trade with the Phillies while trying to rebuild. Seattle sent Jean Segura and relievers Juan Nicasio and James Pazos to the Phillies in exchange for Carlos Santana and JP Crawford. The trade was all about Crawford and trying to get a shortstop for the future. The problem is, we still don’t know if JP Crawford is up for the job.
The former Phillies farmhand was a huge prospect coming up. Philadelphia picked him with the 13th pick in the 2013 MLB Draft and Baseball America ranked him as the 6th best prospect in the sport during a period of time. Despite the accolades, Crawford hasn’t come close to sniffing that potential.
The biggest problem is JP Crawford can’t hit to save his life. It’s not just bad. It’s borderline unplayable bad. In the second half of the season, Crawford had a Wrc+ of 63. Crawford was the arguably the worst offensive player in the sport trotting out a batting line of 188/.288/.299 line in 229 plate appearances. The man is god awful.
It’s not like Crawford has just had bad luck. All of the advanced stats don’t side with him. A .224 batting average on balls in play isn’t great. FanGraphs has Crawford charted as the 2nd worst soft contact rate and the 3rd worst hard contact rate in the sport. Here’s a crazy stat. JP Crawford is hitting .144 against lefties with 0 homers.
That’s not going to do it. Forget about the shortstop of the future. Crawford is getting non-tendered if he keeps that up. Even defensively which is supposed to be his calling card, his UZR is -1.7 in his career. If JP Crawford is going to be the Mariners shortstop of the future, he better figure it out soon.
