Carl Crawford Contract Situation

This MLB season was like a season of The Closer; drama that heightened into one great ending. For those of you who are into Greek drama, this season was in the Oedipus Rex mold. Either way you look at it, the Boston Red Sox are sitting at home despite two large offseason additions. One of them, the Adrian Gonzalez trade, definitely paid dividends. The other, the Carl Crawford signing, looks like a huge bust and a genius ploy by Brian Cashman. I could gush about how Cashman is baseball’s best GM, but I really want to take a closer look at the Crawford situation.

As other writers such as James Walker often say, hindsight is 20/20. Well, let’s start this analysis from the very beginning to see if the Red Sox made a bad move even before this season started.

When the deal was made, Crawford was 29 and came off the best season of his career (7.6 WAR). He posted the best power numbers of his career, and he was also incredible in the field and on the basepaths (per usual). 2011 can be summed up as one due to bad luck (injury), but he has had a generally poor year thanks to a really high strikeout total. A rebound season is in order, but it doesn’t seem like he will ever justify his contract.

Crawford’s contract totals escalate from year to year, and that’s a worry for a low-power left fielder who lives on speed and defense who will be on the wrong side of 30. His 0.4 WAR this season is “good” for about two million, so he has underperformed the first year of his contract by 12 million. It is reasonable to expect three straight 4 WAR seasons, but that means he only breaks even. Rebecca would be happy about that, but I don’t think the Red Sox will. Rebecca and Mayday ran Cheers together, so things would end up working just fine for them. However, the Red Sox have invested too much for him to break even.

Actually, Crawford will only break even for those three years. If you recall, he has already “left” 12 million on the table and is set for worse. After all, he is a player who builds his game on speed and defense. If his last three seasons of the contract yield 2 WAR seasons, then he ripped the Red Sox out of 45 million in value. Yeah, that’s not very good at all.

The Red Sox should have expected a 5 WAR season this year and a 4 WAR season also turn into a 5 WAR season. This means that the Red Sox still should have expected to lose 17 million out of this deal before it was made.