December 9, 2010

Crawford to Boston

All day I was reading that the Angels were going to land Carl Crawford. Via Bronx Banter, Peter Abraham reports the Red Sox sealed the deal:

Source: The Red Sox have a seven-year, $142 million deal done with Carl Crawford.

So Rays fans still get to watch him 18 times a year!

Times have certainly changed, as the Red Sox will now pay an annual salary to Carl Crawford that seemed to high for Manny Ramirez a few years ago. I have to admit I’m somewhat surprised by this deal. Over the last two seasons, Crawford certainly posted numbers that deserved that salary. He’ll play 2011 as a 29-year-old, so he’s still in the peak part of his career. There’s something about Crawford that doesn’t sit well with me long term. One thing is his low career walk totals (293 in 4992 at bats), but he’s improved recently in that regard. The more I look at his numbers, the more I think Emma Span is right at the Bronx Banter link:

I’ve written before (as have many others) that seven years seems ill-advised to me for a player like Crawford who relies so much on his speed, but that’s not to say he won’t kick ass and take names the next few years.

Carl hits a lot of triples. One-hundred five triples before the age of 30 is a lot of triples. When his speed goes, those triples turn into doubles. That’s not so bad, but Carl loses some value. He’s a great base stealer with an 82% success rate. When he loses a step, that might drop to 70%, which is near the break even point in terms of runs, so again he loses value. He receives a nice chunk of value from his defense. Again, a lost step makes that less valuable. I also suspect he beats out a lot of infield grounders for hits. Again, with a loss of a step, his batting average suffers. Since his BA is large percent of his OBP, that will suffer with it.

For a fast runner who steals well and hits double and triples, he doesn’t score that many runs. He only cracked 100 runs three times in his career despite most of his plate appearances coming in the one and two slots. Yes, the Rays suffered poor teams through most of Carl’s career, but two of those seasons were early. In the last three years, when the Rays put Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena in the middle of the lineup, Crawford only scored 100 runs in 2010.

Remember, too, that it won’t be obvious to Carl right away that he lost a step. So not all of those triples turn into doubles; some turn into outs at third, before he realizes he can’t make it any more. He’ll keep trying to steal at a high rate before he learns to pick his spots, so his SB% might take a big nose dive when that step goes. (Boston is very good at the running game, so this may not happen. The team appears to do a good job of judging when runners can and cannot steal, so Carl, in this regard, is very lucky to be on the Red Sox.) Finally, it will be difficult for the Red Sox to take him out of the outfield if he becomes too slow there due to his salary.

So we’ll see. I don’t think the yearly salary is outrageous based on Carl’s last two seasons and the high price top free agents are commanding this winter. Speed tends to fall off quickly, so seven years seems excessive.

T/D

y = 0.0002×2 – 0.0151x + 0.0252
R² = 0.9712

Decreases from age 20 onward with a slightly concave curve (almost linear).

SB att

4E-07×5 – 3E-05×4 + 0.0006×3 – 0.0068×2 + 0.0284x – 0.023
R² = 0.9939

Peaks at 23 and then drops quickly.

SB success rate

y = -0.0003*x^2 – 0.0033*x + 0.0201

It is a nice smooth almost linear, slightly concave curve that goes down from the start (at age 20).

The Boston front office usually knows what they are doing, and if the Red Sox win the World Series this year no one will care that much what happens down the road. There seems to be a bit more risk here than Boston is usually shoulders.

12 thoughts on “Crawford to Boston

  1. Pingback: Report: Crawford lands in Boston for megabucks | River Avenue Blues

  2. James

    David, it’s shocking how early those skills peak.

    This signing seems very unTheo-like. I wonder if his idea is to make a Big Push to win a WS over the next few years, knowing very well that they’ll be paying for it for a long time. (Nothing wrong with planning that way, I’m just wondering.)

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  3. rbj

    How many years have been played on the carpet — and underlying concrete in Tampa? I suspect Carl’s speed will go sooner rather than later.

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  4. dch

    This will help the Red Sox for 3-4 years and then turn south. Great fielder, great speed, doesn’t really walk, not too much power. A slightly better version of Brett Gardner. However, teamed with Pedroia and Ellsbury-its going to be off to the races.

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  5. Pingback: So: is the Carl Crawford deal actually, you know, a good one? | HardballTalk

  6. James

    dch, not really comparable to Gardner (because of Crawford’s power). But compare Curtis Granderson. Very similar players — the salient difference is that Crawford had a career year last year and Granderson was well off his career numbers in 2010.

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  7. ptodd

    Folks need to understand the Red Sox have huge revenues from NESN and in the secondary market for ticket sales that do not show up on the Red Sox books and thus are not shared. The profits from these revenues financed the Liverpool deal.

    The ratings and secondary ticket market slumped in 2010 due to competition from other Boston teams and a poor season that most fans realize was not completely due to injuries.

    The biggest risk for the Red Sox is to be conservative and risk lost revenues, which is a sure bet if they do not win in 2011.

    Red Sox overpaid for Crawford. Just like the Yankees overpaid for Jeter and would like to do so for Cliff Lee. So what. The revenue production per win for teams like the Yankees and Red Sox is close to 6-7 million, unlike the 4-5 million smaller markets receive.

    Red Sox probably preferred Werth, but the Nats beat them too it. Red Sox beat the Yankees to Crawford who was Plan B if they failed to sign Lee (they could then trade Gardner or Granderson for pitching). Weakening the Yankees is always satisfying, if not expensive.

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  8. rrk

    I wonder how much effect the tampa turf has had on Crawford’s numbers.

    It’ll be interesting to see how things play out performance-wise…

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  9. steven goldleaf

    I quoted your line about Crawford’s speed to Bill James on his proprietary site, and he answered:

    ‘Speed players age well. The number one thing that drives players out of the game is the inability to hit, but the number two thing is the lack of speed. State speed on a ten-point scale, and suppose that the player will be driven out of the game when his speed drops below “3”. If one player starts out at “9” and the other player at “4”, which one is quicker to reach the point when he is too slow to play?’

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  10. Nightrider

    Crawford the right guy at the right place and the right time. Bosox wanted to go all the way, to complement Adrian so they ‘picked’ up Carl. Look at his walks-strikeout ratio. Yucks. And Pinto is right, with all this guy’s speed,he sure doesn’t score many runs for his team to make a difference. I would have expected his speed and money he got that he was a 130-run man consistently. Signings like this make you just hate teams like the Bosox and Yanks, who both lost out in 2010 despite the big bucks spent. I would like Baltimore or the Mariners win the AL pennant in 2011.

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  11. ptodd

    Crawfords SB never seemed to hurt the Red Sox much. In the game he stole 6 bases, only 1 SB was directly responsible for a run scored (would not have scored otherwise).

    Ellsbury stole 70 bases in 2009 as leadoff hitter and only scored 94 runs with Pedroia, Ortiz, Youkilis and Bay behind him.

    I wonder if SB are overrated in a good run environment. OBP seems to be more important and both Ellsbury and Crawford do not have very impressive OBP’s (355), which explains their low number of runs scored despite high SB totals.

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