When the offseason started, the speculation that followed was one that most could have anticipated. The team was looking to upgrade and set their sights on the outfield as a place for improvement. It made
sense. With Harrison Bader departing via free agency and Nick Castellanos basically persona non grata in the organization, there were two spots the team would be able to put in some new blood. Most of the time, people look at the free agent or trade markets to find those substitutes, but Dave Dombrowski was pretty clear that one of the positions was probably going to be filled from within.
“We’re giving [Crawford] that opportunity,” Dombrowski said from the general managers’ meetings at The Cosmopolitan. “We think he can play center field. Will that be our best setup as we go forward? I don’t know that. It’s very dependent. But we feel very comfortable if we say, ‘OK, you’re our center fielder.’”
Now, this quote was from November, so while it may not be an actual handing of the job to Crawford, it’s about as close to giving him the job as one can get.
Of course, actions speak louder than words do in baseball and the waiting game would have to be played. Would they go out and actually grab a center fielder, a left fielder or both and have Crawford continue to wait his turn, biding his time in the minors until they pronounces him ready?
Well, guess what they did with the signing of Adolis Garcia?
So, with one fell swoop, the team has done what they set out to do this offseason and completed reconstruction on their outfield.
Justin Crawford, welcome to the pressure.
The signing of Garcia as it relates to Crawford can be thought of in one of two ways.
One, they believe in Garcia’s ability to rebound enough that they aren’t as concerned with the possible struggles of Crawford once he fully gets exposed to major league pitching. While there has been some hand wringing in the fanbase about his readiness, a lot of that feels very much like scouting the stat line. Almost across the board, there is the acknowledgement that Crawford’s success in the minor leagues is not by accident, that he was a first round draft pick for a reason. He has backed that up with some very good to great numbers on his way up the minor league ladder. Yet there are still a lot of voices in the scouting community are skeptical of his minor league success translating to Philadelphia. Even with top rated rookies, there should be skepticism about how they will do in the major leagues until they actually get a chance to perform. So, if they are signing Garcia and going with a platoon that includes Brandon Marsh in left field, they must think that the production Crawford does give them will be offset by the lineup that surrounds him. That’s one way to look at it.
On the other hand, if you have a more optimistic view of things, you could view Garcia’s signing and Crawford’s anointment as the team believing enough in Crawford’s success in the minor leagues, that it will translate well enough that Garcia’s decline offensively these past two years will not be that much of an issue and that his defense will be more important. If that is the case, then they are leaning into an outfield that should be able to catch a lot of flyballs. Garcia was one of the better defensive outfielders last season with Texas and Marsh has shown a very good glove in his own right, even if it is in left field. Yet the bats, if the scouting reports on Crawford are true and Garcia is in fact in decline, may not be something that is aesthetically pleasing.
However one chooses to view it, the pressure on Crawford was just turned up quite a bit.
We don’t know what the market currently sits at for Harrison Bader, nor do we know the asking prices for other options that could handle center field. Maybe the team read those tea leaves and decided that a Marsh/Crawford/Garcia trio was better than what was available at a price point they could live with.
What we can pretty fairly expect is that the team believes it is time. They are moving on from someone in Bader that they know probably had a career year in 2025, yet showed that he can handle playing in Philadelphia while performing at a high level both at the plate and with his glove. All he would cost is money. Easy to say, what with all the luxury tax implications not taken into account, but that is essentially what they are doing. No prospects from an already thin farm system need to go out. Instead, they can keep building it while beginning to transition towards some of the younger players they have right now in their system to give the team an infusion of youth to help try to get over the roadblock in the playoffs.
Has Crawford earned that right? Based on his numbers in the minor leagues, absolutely. There have been hiccups along the way, but he has produced at most every stop he has had as he climbed the ladder. Based on the scouting reports, that answer gets a little hazy. Had we only had one or two people saying that Crawford’s game isn’t really built for MLB, we might be more easily able to handwave them away and point at his production. Instead, there are multiple people talking about it, which means there is validity.
The only way to find out is to give him the chance and that is what they are doing.
Time for him to perform.
