TRIPxCORE

This article seems to agree that the Crawford contract was not great. Carl Crawford Signs Mega-Deal With The Boston Red Sox by Joe Piscopo At the MLB Winter Meetings in Orlando Wednesday night, the Boston Red Sox announced they had signed former Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Carl Crawford to a monster seven-year, $142 million contract. This move came as somewhat of a surprise when all along everyone thought Crawford would be signing with the Los Angeles Angels. The Angels made no secret of the fact that they coveted Crawford and that he was their biggest priority this off-season. Crawford received a total of four offers of which the Red Sox and the Angels were the most lucrative, according to a source close to the negotiations. "It was a very difficult decision for Carl," the source said. "In the end, it came down to his desire to become a member of the Red Sox, move to Boston and the ability to win." The Angels brass have to be steaming over this move as owner Arte Moreno was known to have been none too happy about his team not making the postseason in 2010. He expressed a strong desire to win and said the Angels had money to spend and would be spending it to bring the team back to relevance. With the feelings of Moreno known by all in baseball, and the Angels doing all they could to bring Crawford to Anaheim, this move has to be upsetting to the Angels owner. Crawford is a dynamic player that will be a valuable member of the Red Sox for years to come. However, seven years and $142 million for him is just too much. No one is doubting Crawford's talent or baseball ability. He is a great player but he is not an elite player. The contract he received was an "elite player" contract. His defense is outstanding but his range and speed on defense is going to be wasted in Fenway Park's small left field. He has always been a good hitter and is able to hit for average but not much else. Crawford has a career .296 batting average but only a career .337 OBP. Looking at his average you would think he makes a very good lead-off hitter but his OBP tells a different story. For as good of a hitter as Crawford is, he has never posted 200 hits in a season like Ichiro does every year like clockwork. He has a little pop in his bat but has never hit more than 19 home runs. He has a career OPS of .781 and career OPS+ of 107. The one thing Crawford does excel at is stealing bases. Since becoming a full-time major league player in 2003, Crawford has averaged 50 stolen bases a year. You can expect that he will still be able to steal bases with regularity for quite a few years since he is only 28 years old but that could all change with a leg injury of some sort. Just take a look at what has happened to Jose Reyes of the Mets as an example. To delve just a little bit deeper into Crawford's value, lets take a look at his WAR, or wins above a replacement player. In general, a WAR number between 2-5 represents a regular starting player in the major leagues. A number between 5-8 represents an All-Star caliber player and any number above 8 represents an MVP type of player. Just to give you someone to compare this with, Albert Pujols, one of the best players in the game, has a career average 8.38 WAR according to Baseball-Reference.com. (The two most used sites to get the WAR numbers from are Baseball-Reference.com and Fangraphs.com which both use different methods to calculate WAR.) Carl Crawford has a career WAR of only 3.36 which would represent just a normal starting major league player. (To calculate his WAR, I averaged out both Baseball-Reference's WAR and Fangraphs WAR for Crawford.) So the Red Sox just agreed to give $142 million dollars to a player that can hit well but isn't great at getting on base, doesn't hit for much power, steals a lot of bases, and is only an average major league player according to his WAR. So in essence, they are paying for a good batting average and stolen bases. Is that an elite player worthy of $142 million? In my mind, it isn't. The Red Sox failed to make the postseason in 2010. For a team that is now accustomed to winning, this had to sting, which is why I think they felt they needed to make big moves this off-season. They made their first big splash with a trade for Adrian Gonzalez from the Padres and now the Crawford signing. Crawford was widely seen as the big free agent position player of the off-season. The Red Sox have been big spenders for several years now but they have always been careful not to give out deals that were too long. A seven-year contract for the Red Sox is an abnormal move for them and I believe it was a knee-jerk reaction to missing the postseason in 2010. Certainly the Red Sox are going to be a great team now, probably the best in the AL East. In the final 2-3 years of the Crawford deal, though, I think the Red Sox will come to regret making this move and his contract will be seen by many as an albatross around the necks of the Red Sox.