Can Justin Crawford Help the Phillies Now?

I said I needed something to write about, but wanted to write and @norseofbroad.bsky.social asked the question that is on many fans’ minds.

The answer is very firmly a maybe, which is entirely a coward’s answer and not worthy of writing, but also I have been just short of actually writing about Crawford for a while, so why not.

Over the last 6 weeks (let’s call that since the start of July), Crawford is hitting .319/.423/.422 for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs. AAA stats aren’t MLB stats, but this would have been a really quick bit of analysis if he had a sub .600 OPS in AAA. In August, Crawford is posting his highest hard hit rate (58.1%) and average exit velocity (93.6 mph) which are both good signs, but his launch angle is back down to 1 degree which is why his Barrels per Batted Ball Event is declined from last month.

Before we go down the number rabbit hole without purpose it is probably worth changing this question from rear facing to forward facing and the very logical “Would Justin Crawford hit better than Nick Castellanos and Max Kepler for the rest of the season?” Then also breaking this up into three parts because two are relevant to the question and one is relevant to what I want to write about.

1. Is Justin Crawford capable of hitting better than Max and Nick?
2. Would Justin Crawford actually hit better than Max and Nick?
3. Should the Phillies actually do this?

We know that Crawford hits the ball on the ground and is fast, and that first part is a problem and that second part is how he someone mitigates this. But a 61.8% ground ball rate is not great. Since 2021, only 2021 Raimel Tapia (.699 OPS) and 2023 Tim Anderson (.582) have had batting title qualifying seasons over 60%. The only other player over 57% is three seasons of Christian Yelich, but Yelich has a career HR/FB rate of 22.2% and was at 14.7%, 20.2%, and 32.4% in his three seasons, and Crawford has peaked at 12.3%. If he suddenly starts pulling fly balls out of the park at a rate that has the Phillies accused of cheating at home we can reevaluate that comp. So the answer is that the ground ball rate might not cap him below a .600 OPS, but it isn’t exactly an indicator that he can be better than that either.

Part of this is the very obvious answer that ground balls just don’t have that much impact. The best OPS since 2021 is 2022 Bobby Witt Jr. with a .702 OPS on ground balls, and that correlates directly with that being the highest BABIP on ground balls at .332. The highest ISOs belong to 2024 Jackson Merrill and Wyattt Langford at .054 and .059, unsurprisingly very low. It feels really safe to say that Crawford’s current .410 BABIP is entirely unsustainable. This year Jonathan Aranda leads the league in BABIP at .409, but that is from a 26.3% line drive rate and 37.8% ground ball rate. Since 2021 the highest BABIP belongs to Brandon Marsh at .369, followed by Riley Greene at .352. Trea Turner is at .335, which will be our comp, especially since it is also Yelich’s BABIP in that span. Many many years ago I wrote some excel formulas that just do a crude adjustment on a stat line that is batted ball type independent but regresses based on a BABIP, so here is our Marsh level and Turner level very crude approximations merely adjusting Crawford’s BABIP.

Brandon Marsh (.369) – .301/.387/.382

Turner/Yelich (.335) – .274/.363/.351

Both of those are clear of our .600 OPS mark, but that second line is not inspiring a lot of confidence. Especially since we have not regressed the walk and strikeout numbers. Crawford is currently at a career high 12.3% BB% after 8.2% (23) and 6.4% (24), so let’s be generous and say it only regresses to a still impressive 10%. Back in 2022, Jeff Zimmerman wrote for Rotographs that a 4.5% increase in strikeout rate from AAA to MLB. Crawford is at 18.5% this year which is near to where he has been historically, so let’s bump him to 23% knowing full well that this probably comes out in more poor contact than actual strikeouts because we know the type of player Crawford is. So let’s run our crude numbers again with those adjusted BB and K numbers.

Adjusted Brandon Marsh (.369 BABIP) – .284/.355/.361

Adjusted Turner/Yelich (.335 BABIP) – .259/.333/.332

We are very much nearing the point at which it isn’t worse than Nick and Max, but I don’t know if that is a real win if the BABIP is not an outlier positive.

Another way to look at this was to compare Crawford to his peers, and for that I turned to Rob Orr’s site https://therealestmuto.shinyapps.io/Damage/. From here we can see that Crawford is slightly below median in 90th percentile Exit Velocity at 103.1 mph, but that is actually fairly encouraging given how little game power he has shown, there is more to tap into. His plate discipline numbers are not great, ranking 28th percentile in Rob’s selectivity, and 26th percentile in chase rate. But on the other hand, we can see that lack of high strikeout rate in a zone contact rate of 77th percentile. So vs his peers, Crawford swings out of the zone a lot (it should be noted he doesn’t swing in the zone at a particularly high rate, something he should probably do more often), but he is swinging less this year than he ever has. However, he is hard to beat in the zone. We can also stop in one more place and see that he is 95th percentile in whiffs vs secondary pitches, which closes any idea that you can just beat him with offspeed.

That all seems to close the book on, he can be better than Max and Nick, even if a crude floor is not really that much better (it could be much worse if the walk rate collapses like it did for Otto Kemp, but we can get to that now). But would he actually be able to do it, and the answer is once again maybe, because there are some actual holes here that he would need to close up to make this all work.

Because the logical place you end up if you think too hard about him chasing, having very good but not elite zone contact, but elite whiffs vs secondary pitches, is that there is a fastball problem. And there is a problem. Among pitch types he has seen more than 40 times, he whiffs on sinkers more than any other pitch at 22.1% of swings. His 4-seam whiff rate is 18.8%, right between sliders and curveballs. It isn’t just the whiff rate, Crawford has yet to barrel a fastball all year, despite hitting them on average as hard as he hits other pitches. His launch angle on 4-seam fastballs is 0 degrees, and it is -6 degrees on sinkers, whereas all other pitches with a meaningful sample are greater than 0. A sky high BABIP against fastballs keeps him afloat, but you don’t particularly want to be in a place where you are as bad against fastballs as you are against offspeed, especially when the average 4-seam fastball velocity he is seeing is 93.2 mph.

The actual good news, is he has at least addressed the whiff problem the last two months. After posting whiff rates against fastballs of 23.4%, 17.6%, and 24.1% the first three months, he is at 13.7% and 15.2% the last two months. That has not really come with any meaningful increase in quality of contact, but it at least indicates that he has some chance to not have his strikeout rate balloon. Except that he is getting beat by non-fastballs more the last two months. Closing one hole that then opens another shows an ability to make adjustments, but it also isn’t a sustainable pattern. The problem visually stems from Crawford’s swing which has some timing and consistency issues that are going to make it difficult for him to be on time with all of his swings. He has the hands to adjust, but so far we see that in the quality of contact.

The other issue with Crawford is also swing related. If the ball gets inside to him his swing will be timed up and this has been especially true on cutters inside to him. The problem has been that is the only place he gets to power and he seems to know that. Here is his ISO heat map from Brooks Baseball.

We can see in his swing rates he is also really focused on in.

Pitchers are already working him away in AAA, and while it is good to know your strength, I feel very comfortable saying that the scouting report is going to say work him away and through fastballs, and in particular sinkers to limit the damage.

So can Crawford actually perform? Sure. He has done it every level, it just would take an extreme outlier outcome, and more importantly it would take him not leaving these glaring holes open for exploitation.

Should the Phillies actually give this a go? IT really depends. Dombrowski has said they only want him up if he can play everyday, which is a good thing to say about all young players, especially those who are only 21 years old. To call him up, the Phillies would need to make a roster investment. Crawford is not on the 40 and not Rule 5 eligible this offseason, so calling him up uses up some flexibility heading into the offseason. If the Phillies are going to let him just go play and learn and struggle, I don’t think you look back on that price as high. If he plays occasionally and maybe has a small niche role in the postseason, you go back to those above numbers and wonder if you are actually getting a meaningful upgrade on Nick and Max, or even Rojas. There is a chance you catch lightning in a bottle with Crawford and small sample size success in a small sample size is banked performance even if the bill comes due later. It is likely he will struggle, and that is because young players coming up from AAA for the first time struggle. What you are looking for is a better long term solution and maybe a tiny near term upgrade.

So I think the answer is not maybe, but it probably is yes, if. If Nick and Max just hit like this the rest of the way Crawford can beat that. If they don’t and he struggles as you can reasonably predict, the whole package with defense and speed is probably closer to a push. Is the roster moves worth a push? Probably not, which is why the Phillies are in what looks like a stalemate to see which way the outfielders trend.