An Old Style Of Baseball Emerges In Philly's Newest Star

PHILADELPHIA, PA — No Showman nor Schwarbomb sent the final chasmic roar up from the bowels of the Bank on Wednesday afternoon.

No, it was a sharp ground ball smacked in the hole by Phillies rookie Justin Crawford, a player who hits many ground balls, who rarely strikes out, and who leads the team in every significant offensive category after the opening week of the season.

And while the 22-year-old is a former first round draft pick who has always been praised for certain raw tools, like his fielding and his speed, and while he obliterated the highest level of the minors last year as a 21-year-old, skeptics abounded ahead of his big league debut.

Some evaluators did not even include Crawford in their annual top 100 lists. The consensus pointed confidently to the "underlying metrics" in his approach. The exit velocity on his batted balls is not high enough. His launch angle is no good. His profile will not translate to the major leagues.

Of course to a data analyst looking at a spreadsheet and seeking to make projections based on math alone, this is absolutely correct. But the past 25 years have brought such unquestioning and widespread adoration of data and the advancements of technological analysis that even experienced baseball minds seem blind to the value of a player that resists easy categorization.

It's ironic that the most lasting line from "Moneyball," the Aaron Sorkin movie based on Michael Lewis's book that made baseball's sabermetrics famous, seems to glorify this analysis as favoring the underdog.

"How can you not be romantic about baseball?" Brad Pitt's character, Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, says in the celebrated scene, in which an unlikely player hits a home run without realizing it. The crux of the thesis was essentially that walks and home runs are undervalued and they can come from nontraditional players.

You cannot, of course, not be romantic about baseball. But it was always a mistake to think our grasp of data had replaced entropy.

The paradigmatic shifting beauty of Billy be what it may have been a quarter century ago, that bilious world of analytics is now the establishment. Justin Crawford, a contact hitter without power, is now the nontraditional player ignored by evaluators. Increasing numbers of MLB stars are so-called "three true outcomes" players: nearly every time they're at bat, they either walk, strike out, or hit a home run.

The Bank's been philled to the brim with three true outcome men for years. That's Rhys Hoskins and Nick Castellanos. It's Adolis Garcia. Bryce Harper is increasingly one. Kyle Schwarber is perhaps the truest three true outcomes player to ever play the game.

Front offices love this type of player not just for the Moneyball-backed science of big swings and the walks that come with them, but also because they perceive in it the illusion of certainty and control. There is a certain confirmation bias in the seemingly singular importance to winning of a 500 foot Schwarber special. It's easy to be in awe. Of course the data supports it. A home run is at least one guaranteed run.

But when Crawford stepped into the box in the bottom of the tenth inning Wednesday, the most valuable thing he could do was put the ball in play. Marsh would not have scored from third on a walk. Swing for the fences players, even the greats like Schwarber, Harper, and Aaron Judge, sacrifice the chance of contact with a much higher likelihood of a pop out or a strike out, which also would not have scored Marsh. Nothing could be more valuable in that moment than a contact hitter, those words so loathed in the modern parlance of the sport.

When paradigms shift, pennies of the past are lost. It's true that many ground ball hitters do not have success in the major leagues today. But Crawford hits for so much contact, to the right parts of the field, and runs with such speed, that he clearly defies the stereotype of his profile. He is kin to chaos. And on a team full of boom or bust hitters that were probably only a handful of RBI singles away from one or two World Series championships, there could be no greater complement.

In a city of absolute immoderation, Crawford stopped a Shakespearean tragedy from unfolding by sealing the series win against the Washington Nationals. He'll be called on to do it many more times. It's the tool the Phillies need. Baseball remains a microcosm. Our control is faint. Anything can happen when you cry havoc and put the ball in play.