A totally frivolous post I have no problem if you want to erase this post. It's just something...

A totally frivolous post

I have no problem if you want to erase this post. It's just something that occurred to me and I wanted to express it somewhere.

I recently read that Crawford decided, after viewing tapes the past off-season, that he needed to be more selective at the plate.

When Crawford was promoted at age 20 in 2002 he was totally raw and inexperienced. Football was actually his game. Suppose the exact same Crawford were 20 years old in 2006 in the Rays organization.

A hypothetical question:

When would he have been promoted, and what would his career have looked like? That is, would the Rays have worked on his plate discipline in the minors so that when he arrived he was already more aware of that skill?

Leaving aside imponderables (a different situation, different players et al), is it possible he would have become a far better player even than he is?

over 2 years ago bobr 3 comments 0 recs |

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I have no idea what his career would look like.

But I can’t envision him not being better by being patient.

by R.J. Anderson on Aug 13, 2009 7:36 PM EDT reply actions

He probably would have been 22 or 23 by the time he made it to the majors under this regime

Whether he actually would have learned to be more selective, who knows. It’s not as if coaches (other than probably Lee Elia, who seemed to preach swinging all the time) haven’t been pounding that into his head for years. If he just realized it now, after 7 years in the majors, I doubt he would have learned it in the minors unless the team forcibly held him back unless he showed improvement there.

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"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."

by Brickhaus on Aug 13, 2009 8:21 PM EDT reply actions

I am speculating that the new regime

would focus on that from the start, and as a young player, not yet set in his ways or having tasted major league success, and known for an intense work ethic, he might have been more amenable to working on plate discipline. I think also that the new regime isolates specific kinds of skills and requires players to work on them while still in the minors.

As it happened, after 4 years of apparently increasing improvement and as far as I can tell little demand for plate discipline from his managers, I think it was more difficult for him to suddenly adapt to it. It apparently took a disappointing season to focus his attention on the issue.

I think it is easier to mold an unformed player than one already established with a particular style.

by bobr on Aug 13, 2009 10:49 PM EDT up reply actions