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J.P. Crawford is the same but better

J.P. Crawford hasn’t budged from his approach — he’s just good at it now.

Crawford was fine in 2020. His bat was passable for a glove first shortstop and overall he was a net-positive for the Mariners. He didn’t really need to improve to justify his spot on the roster. But it also seemed there were a few slight adjustments to his approach that could make him a good or even great hitter.

As of July 1, he’s made those adjustments.

Let’s start with a given: Crawford’s swing decisions have been excellent.

Few players in the pitch tracking era have dedicated a greater portion of their swings to the heart region. That remains true in 2021.

Awesome.

The difference is this year he’s been more aggressive within the heart region. His swing rate on heart pitches has jumped from 64.7% in 2020 (10th percentile) to 71.6% in 2021 (40th percentile).

Importantly, he’s been more aggressive without expanding the zone and chasing bad pitches.

My pitch selection metric assigns a run value to each decision to swing or take based on count and location. Last year, Crawford’s pitch selection ranked in the 70th percentile. That’s good but all those takes down the middle hurt him. With his more aggressive approach, his pitch selection score has improved to the 80th percentile — a small but valuable difference.

Basically, Crawford has continued to swing only at good pitches, and now he’s doing it more often. It’s such an obvious and simple improvement from his 2020 approach. He still has his trademarked pickiness and he still takes a ton of strikes, but he’s no longer giving up such extreme value in the middle of the plate.

His pitch selection is the same but better.

Crawford’s overall quality of contact numbers look nearly identical to 2020. In fact, his .312 xwOBA is three points lower than last year.

Not great.

But with a rolling average, we see his xwOBA is steadily trending up in 2021.

His quality of contact has clearly improved since the start of the year.

Crawford’s season can be split in two parts: a dreadful April followed by an excellent May and June.

The 40% sweet spot rate over the last two months (85th percentile) really stands out.

Crawford has never hit the ball hard and probably never will — he’s in the bottom third of the league for hard hit rate even during the best stretch of his career. But he doesn’t really need to if he can hit it at good angles.

Here’s a density chart of his batted balls by launch angle:

That’s just about perfect for a player like Crawford. Not only is his sweet spot rate way up, his mishits are clustered in that high ground ball region just below the sweet spot (Baseball Savant calls these “burners”). Those are still really valuable batted balls.

That’s something he wasn’t doing in April:

To determine the overall value of his launch angle profile, I assign each batted ball the league average xwOBA for that angle. It’s an attempt to isolate the true value of the angle in an exit velocity neutral environment.

Here’s a density plot that shows how frequently he’s found the most valuable angles:

And compared to April.

Last year, Crawford’s launch angle isolated xwOBA value ranked in the 35th percentile. This year, it ranks in the 60th percentile and 85th percentile since May. He’s making really good, high-value contact without selling out for fly balls.

Crawford has raised his quality of contact floor by lowering his launch angle and focusing on line drives.

It’s not like these are drastic changes, either. If you look at his Baseball Savant profile, you’ll see his rates for fly balls, line drives and grounders are very similar to 2020. He’s simply made a few small adjustments that better compliment his skillset.

His launch angle is the same but better.

Crawford’s spray chart looks pretty much the same as last year, too. He very consistently hits the ball to the opposite field in the top 10% of the league.

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with an oppo-heavy profile. It does, however, require a bit of a balancing act — the few balls hit to the pull side have to be valuable enough to make up for the aggregated wOBA decline to the opposite field.

Crawford didn’t have that balance in 2020. He either rolled over for a ground out or hit a weak fly ball. His xwOBAcon to the pull side last year was .294 (5th percentile).

This year his xwOBAcon to the pull side is .347 (15th percentile) and .369 since May (25th percentile). That may sound like a small, unremarkable difference, but that’s a huge improvement — reducing negative value works the same as adding positive value.

What’s interesting is this year his ground ball rate to the pull side is nearly identical to 2020. And he’s not hitting those grounders any harder. The difference is he’s making much better contact with his fly balls and line drives to the pull side.

This is something that didn’t look even remotely possible last year:

Servais acknowledge this point as well in the interview with Divish.

Crawford’s success hasn’t come from trying to yank everything into the right field seats. He’s retained his affinity for slapping the ball to the opposite field but found a way to turn on the occasional mistake down the middle.

I’ll say it again: his spray profile is the same but better.

It’s certainly convenient to look at his two good months and ignore the significant period of time when Crawford was bad. And as the rolling xwOBA chart shows, he’s been really good before and crashed hard. It’s possible that he’s prone to streaks and in a hot one now.

But this does feel like a break through of sorts for Crawford. He’s making adjustments after the league adjusted to him. He’s not trying to do too much or change his game — he’s simply better at focusing on his strengths and hiding his weaknesses.

Crawford still has the same approach that made him a top prospect and key trade target for the Mariners. He’s just good at it now.

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