Whicker: Brandon Crawford, Giants put focus on value of defense

As fable has it, a newsman arrived precocious to Dodger Stadium 1 nighttime due to the fact that helium was progressive successful a superior mishap astatine the country of Jack and Daniels.

He walked into the property container successful the 4th inning oregon truthful and demanded that a workfellow “catch maine up” connected the action. Seizing the scorebook and shaking disconnected the cobwebs, helium noticed a tiny asterisk adjacent to 2 plays.

“What does this mean?” helium asked.

He was told that each prima signified outstanding defense.

“Humpf,” helium declared. “I’ll beryllium the justice of that.”

It’s bully to support a precocious bar, oregon to beryllium astatine one. It’s nicer to transcend it.

The Giants divided their archetypal 2 National League Division Series games with the Dodgers connected Friday and Saturday and are uncomfortably matched against three-time Cy Young Award victor Max Scherzer successful Game 3 connected Monday night. But it took the Dodgers a crippled and a fractional to fig retired harmless spaces against San Francisco’s defense.

On Saturday, 36-year-old 3rd baseman Evan Longoria sprawled and threw and retired Chris Taylor. Kris Bryant, playing possibly his fourth-best position, dived to contradict Trea Turner a line-drive azygous successful halfway field.

On Friday, Tommy La Stella and Brandon Crawford came up with that glove-flip treble play connected Justin Turner that you mightiness person 100 much chances to spot again. “We don’t walk a batch of clip practicing that,” Manager Gabe Kapler said, superfluously.

Giants pitcher Logan Webb, the Game 1 winner, absorbed J. Turner’s comebacker disconnected his limb and kept his chill agelong capable to marque the play.

This helps explicate the Giants to the agnostics successful our midst. They joined ground-ball pitching with antiaircraft virtuosity. Only the Phillies allowed a higher percent of grounders than the Giants (45.1 percent), and San Francisco pitchers had the champion locomotion percent (6.9) successful baseball. Former Dodger Alex Wood, the Game 3 starter, persuades crushed balls connected 50 percent of his unrecorded action.

The Dodgers really had the champion antiaircraft ratio successful the majors, a conception invented by Baseball-Reference.com. In the sixth inning Saturday, close fielder Mookie Betts fired from close tract and caught Wilmer Flores trying to instrumentality 3rd connected Crawford’s single. That killed San Francisco’s rally aft 1 tally and preserved the Dodgers’ borderline astatine 6-2. It coiled up 9-2, yet that play was disproportionately analyzed. That’s the playoffs. Defense, hidden down the regular-season curtain, ever commands the stage.

Crawford, who leads each shortstops successful Fangraphs’ Revised Zone Rating, is being nominated for the National League MVP due to the fact that of that. Defensive analytics are fundamentally successful the beholder’s eye, but Crawford made 9 errors successful 135 games without sacrificing scope astatine property 34.

He besides made an bonzer violative comeback. Last twelvemonth Crawford endured the archetypal 20 games without an extra-base hit. This twelvemonth helium deed .290 with an .895 OPS, and 24 location runs and 90 RBIs. All those numbers are vocation highs for a lifelong Giants instrumentality who grew up withstanding the winds astatine Candlestick Park, seeking autographs from Willie Mays (successfully) and Barry Bonds (not), and holding unneurotic the infield for the 2010, 2012 and 2014 satellite champions.

All of that provided an unforeseen, $32 million, two-year contract extension,

“Stud,” Trea Turner, the Dodgers’ shortstop-turned-second baseman, replied erstwhile asked astir Crawford. “He’s ever been a bully player, unbelievable defense, but this twelvemonth he’s a feline you privation to avoid. You don’t privation to spot him travel up determination successful immoderate situation, really.”

In a reasonably fluid MVP race, it’s hard to disregard the beating bosom of a squad that zoomed from a .483 triumph percent to .660.

Crawford was a fourth-round pick, retired of UCLA, but mightiness person gone higher if helium hadn’t declined to play a 2nd twelvemonth for Team USA, wherever helium was being platooned with Zack Cozart. Instead helium went to the Cape Cod League, with wood bats and immoderate of the champion assemblage pitchers, and struggled.

That followed him into the draft. Three years aboriginal helium was wearing a Giants jersey and lasting astatine shortstop, connected the crushed wherever helium utilized to ticker Rich Aurilia and Omar Vizquel.

“He’s conscionable a magician with a baseball,” UCLA manager John Savage said. “You tin spot immoderate of the things helium does connected YouTube. At UCLA helium loved to play defense, to the constituent wherever we’d person to march him to the cage to enactment connected offense. That’s 1 of his goals, to commencement his vocation astatine shortstop and extremity it there. With those feet and that arm, helium should person a chance.

“We’d spell implicit to the shot signifier tract immoderate days and messiness around, and he’d look similar a Pac-12 quarterback retired there. He’s conscionable 1 of those athletes.”

In the fractions of a 2nd that nutrient playoff defense, the athletes thin to travel out, arsenic bash the stars.

there are triangles, determination are rectangles, and past determination are 𝓇𝑒𝓅𝓁𝒶𝓎 𝒶𝓃𝑔𝓁𝑒𝓈 pic.twitter.com/4cHMVCLuZV

— Cut4 (@Cut4) October 9, 2021