After a hacktastic start, Carl Crawford has gone on a refreshingly excellent walking spree, raising his BB% shockingly close to league average 26 games into the 2009 season:

via www.fangraphs.com

Has Mr. Crawford, career 5.1% BB rate and all, 951 games into his major league career figured out the walk, 26 games into the 2009 season? 

We've never seen this before from Crawford, except we have seen it before, in the first 26 games of 2006 (9.6%) and 2007 (11.2%) to be exact:

via www.fangraphs.com

For his career, Crawford has generally started well enough with decent walk rates in April and May only to see those numbers decline and bottom out in July, a month in which his career BB rate is 3.4%.

• March/April: 6.1%
• May: 7.5%
• June: 4.3%
• July: 3.4%
• August: 4.4%
• September/October: 4.4%

When the temperature rises, will we see this pattern reemerge or has Crawford finally accepted the walk into his life (or is the pattern completely meaningless)?  There is at least one example of a similar player who made mid-career strides in the patience department. 

Baseball-reference.com lists Claudell Washington as the #3 most similar player by age to Crawford.   Like Crawford, Washington was a speedy hacker who debuted at a very young age and played mostly corner outfield.   His walk rates were pretty awful until about his age 27 season:

via www.fangraphs.com

This is my hope for Crawford, but given his now lengthy history of hackery, I'm not getting overly excited by his burst of patience.  Make no mistake, I love Carl Crawford.  To me, he is Mr. Ray for both his longevity and productivity with this team, but we've seen this false hope before.

What do you think: is the new, patient Crawford here for the long-term?