Crowe on DL
Chicken Dance confirms a "left intercostal muscle strain." Crowe continues to be a crazy yo-yo story. Even casual Indians fans know who he is, but he's become a kind of running joke as well. There have been plenty of times where he has been absolutely awful ("Ah! Second base!!"), plenty of times when he has been hurt, and yet he still gets spring training ABs with the big club.
At the time of his injury, he had worked his OPS up to (a batting average inflated) .921. If he had enough bats to qualify, that would make him a top 10 hitter in the Eastern League. However, Chris Gimenez is not impressed.
He's 24, a year younger than Gimenez (although I'll ask APV to check this). And has 26 BBs to 26 Ks. Everything about this screams oft-injured spare outfielder, so hooray.
Weglarz is different - he's a potential impact player. Crowe is the name that just won't go away.
Also, Lofgren is back, and something about LaPorta.
I had a whiny intro paragraph about how everything continues to go wrong, but I deleted it.
about 1 year ago
dgcambridge
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Wow. That thing is somehow both pathetic and impressive. It’s like he’s announced that he’s OK being a career minor leaguer. “Just let me know when I can be the GCL hitting coach.”
by dgcambridge on Jul 9, 2008 12:35 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
The Yankees are running a promotion to try to get Giambi (and his moustache) selected for the last All-Star team spot. Fans get a free false moustache which can be shaped and attached to one’s upper lip. Are the Aeros anywhere near Yankee Stadium later this week?
by peter m on Jul 9, 2008 12:46 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Any chance that Chisenhall might get to play in Lake County this year?
by dgcambridge on Jul 9, 2008 12:50 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I would hope so, but I think its going to be based on more direct observation of how he plays (i.e. what they see in as opposed to stats) If they see that he looks like he’d survive in Lake County and is ready for the jump I hope they bump him, let him play out this year there and then start their next season with the hope of maybe bumping up to Kinston by mid summer or at least be in the position to show that he could make the jump by accumulating enough plate appearances at Lake County.
by hans on Jul 9, 2008 2:34 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
So whats the expected DL time for Crowe for an injury of this nature? He’s actually been playing pretty well of late and should be pushed up to AAA if this injury doesn’t cause him to be out for an extended period of time.
by hans on Jul 9, 2008 2:36 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
depends entirely on the severity of the strain, I would guess. If it’s severe, could be as long as 4-6 weeks. If it’s not, I expect he’d be back as soon as his 15-day DL stint ends. Given it was initially described as a “bruise”, I’d guess it is not terribly severe.
by APV on Jul 9, 2008 2:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
actually, if i recall correctly, the minors use a 7-day DL, not a 15.
by talonk on Jul 9, 2008 3:15 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
So what is the best case scenario with Crowe? He doesn’t seem to fit in with any plans.
by mjschaefer on Jul 9, 2008 3:36 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Taken in Rule 5 draft, we get $50,000.
Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit. No team would actually take him at this point.
by Jay on Jul 9, 2008 3:51 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
He recovers, hits a bit more, is promoted within a month, and continues to hit at AAA at age 24, reducing his K rate, walking a decent amount, and keeping up a good contact rate, basically remain hot for the rest of the season.
by hans on Jul 9, 2008 3:56 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
We trade him, along with Casey Blake, to acquire a good young player who fits one of our positional needs (corner outfield, 1B, 3B, 2B). Won’t happen, I know.
by peter m on Jul 9, 2008 4:25 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Jody Gerut with a weaker arm?
Assuming he can even keep up his current Akron numbers, that just matches performances by guys like Mulhern, Barton, and Goleski. If he was one year younger, I would have said a possible regular/platoon guy.
by dgcambridge on Jul 9, 2008 4:26 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Best case scenario: Chuck Knoblauch, circa 1998, except as a leftfielder, not 2b. I’ll concede that it’s not very likely, but it’s conceivable, and that’s why you protect from the Rule 5 draft, at least for another year.
by ken from alexandria on Jul 9, 2008 4:37 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
What?
Knoblauch would have been a very marginal player in LF, i.e., not worth protecting. LF and 2B are on opposite sides of the defensive spectrum.
Frankly, they should have kept pushing him to play 2B. They were worrying about screwing up his hitting, but there wasn’t really that much to worry about as it turned out.
by Jay on Jul 9, 2008 8:18 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
If Crowe started to hit like the mid-’90s Knoblauch, he’d deserve a place on our roster, and in fact he’d be our best lf option until the day that Weglarz arrives. I agree that Crowe would be much more valuable as a 2b, and that he was a risky and not very smart pick to begin with.
by ken from alexandria on Jul 9, 2008 9:13 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
post season pinch runner. think josh barfield.
by Brick. on Jul 9, 2008 4:38 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
What is this “post season” you speak of?
"Lotta heart in Cleveland." - Ian Hunter
by Denver Tribe Fan on Jul 9, 2008 5:03 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Rec!
"It's hard to win when you don't score." Cliff Lee, 9/28/05.
by Harry Doyle on Jul 10, 2008 11:16 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
So basically he’s a wild-card that is most likely turn out to be a 2?
by mjschaefer on Jul 9, 2008 5:29 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I don’t quite get the disgust over Crowe. He’s been a disappointing 1st round pick, with only intermittent flashes of good play separated by stretches of awfulness. Disappointing first round picks are something we should be used to, though. As well as players with injury problems (paging Adam Miller). What you hope for these guys though is that they play well enough to bring them back into consideration. Crowe’s still having injury issues (although most of them seem to be the non-critical, nagging type injuries), but when on the field this year he actually is doing what we should be hoping he does to regain some relevance. He’s hitting .325/.415/.506…that’s good. That ALL-WORLD prospect we just got from Milwaukee was hitting .288/.402/.576 in AA (Yes I know Laporta is a lot younger and actually a much much better baseball player, but I’m just saying). And yes, Crowe is old (24). But because of injuries he’s only tallied about 2 full seasons of professional games, so I’m pretty sure there’s reason to think there is room for improvement given additional exposure.
I guess I am trying to be a Crowe apologist now. But all I’m trying to say is that when you have disappointing prospects, you don’t want them to continue to be disappointing. You actually want them to play at a high enough level to regain the prospect status they once had (presumably because smart people thought they could be good someday). I hope Crowe gets and stays healthy. And I think if he does AND IF HE CONTINUES TO PLAY LIKE HE HAS, he still has the potential to play a non-meaningless role in Cleveland.
by APV on Jul 9, 2008 6:04 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
I like it. I’m trying to get on board with him, but this latest injury made me worried again. I’ll keep cheering for him to be the non-meaningless guy, but I’ll probably keep apologizing for it.
It’s not crazy to think he could sustain this, right? He’s always been thought to have the eye, and its reasonable to think he’s finally developed some muscle.
by dgcambridge on Jul 9, 2008 6:35 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I’m with you all the way with Crowe, but I’m starting to think that the “disgust” of which you speak stems from our recent record with early-round draft picks. Not to throw a Nosco-like fit here, but other teams seem to be doing a lot better than the likes of Crowe, Garko, Sowers, Mills, Snyder, Chisenhall, et al.
by ken from alexandria on Jul 9, 2008 6:47 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
In my case, because he never made sense as a 14th overall pick to begin with.
You know I don’t buy into the all-encompassing Indians-play-too-safe-in-the-draft complaints. I think Crowe was actually a risky pick, and in my view, a dumb one. Risky because with such a limited upside, he basically has to perform well, and immediately, and consistently, or else he’s worthless.
Why don’t we get excited about a 23-year-old in Kinston? Because he has to succeed at every level and get promoted to the next one four years in a row in order to ever make a contribution to the big-league club. Same was true for Crowe — with his limited ceiling, if he didn’t hit the ground running and kick ass all the time, he’d be worthless. And he didn’t hit the ground running, and he has been worthless. In many ways the same was true of Guthrie.
If you’re going to draft a college hitter in the first half of the first round, he’d damned well better be ready to go to Akron for the start of his first season. Crowe has taken three years to have two good months in Akron—a 924 OPS inflated by 368 BABIP. Ryan Garko was a year older, a fourth-rounder and a catcher, and he was in Buffalo within 15 months of being drafted. We had every right to expect that out of Crowe.
His high draft position needed serious justifying given his low power ceiling, and instead, we’ve gotten arguably the worst performance out of any of our recent first-rounders. What other college junior or senior have we drafted in the first round who didn’t make it out of Triple-A within three years? And then — quite apart from the injuries — we get this whining about how playing 2B distracted him, and even playing LF or RF threw him off. Frankly, the whole thing is pathetic. He’s a bonus baby who has simply never come through as a pro.
by Jay on Jul 9, 2008 8:33 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Sorry … it should have been “who didn’t make it out of Double-A within three years.”
by Jay on Jul 9, 2008 8:37 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
To the Tribe’s credit, they pushed him to Akron by midway in his first full season. He just sucked there. And then he sucked there again last year. Please let this new power be real.
Anyway, we’ll see what they do with Chisenhall. At least he’s got some pop potential. But he was also drafted in his age-20 season. Crowe was drafted in his age-21 season (both have fall birthdays). And Garko was 22.
by dgcambridge on Jul 9, 2008 9:07 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
Both Chisenhall and Mills were drafted at age 20. I think this is not an accident. The old Rule 5 protection rules made that a little risky, now it’s not so risky (don’t have to protect them until the fourth end-of-season after they’re drafted), and players that age represent a nice balance between projectability and proximity.
by Jay on Jul 10, 2008 12:11 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I’ve got to say, Jay, I think you are taking the issue of age too far. I’ll see if I can do something to back that statement up at some point…but for now. Crowe is 24. The youngest guys on Akron’s roster are 23 (Laporta – 14 months younger, JoshRod – 13 months, Hodges – 10 months). If you move down to Kinston, there are many more younger guys, but it is doubtful how many of them will get to and get out of Akron before the age of 24. The only guys who I see having a good chance of that are Mills (currently 21), Weglarz (currently 20), and maybe Carlos Rivero (currently 20). Even with these guys, though, this is all assuming they don’t get stagnated in Kinston or Akron on the way.
Crowe is obviously not on the fast-track we’d hope a draftee of his status would be. But he’s not that far behind the standard curve for a draftee of his age/status either.
by APV on Jul 10, 2008 9:16 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
thinking aloud a bit….consider again the Laporta-Crowe comparison. Both 1st round, college draftees. Crowe came out after his junior year, age 21 (in which he put up a 1.192 OPS at Arizona with .313 ISO – significantly driven by speed with 15 3Bs). Laporta didn’t come out till after his senior year at Florida, age 22, in part because he had a bad junior year (OPS .948, .279 ISO). He destroyed the competition as a senior, posting a 1.399 OPS with a .415 ISO and was taken 7th overall that season, getting brief exposure to rookie and low-A ball at the end of that summer. Laporta then began his this season at AA, his first full season out of college as a 23-year old. Crowe signed faster, spent more time playing that year he was drafted, most of it at Lake County. The following year, his first full pro-season and what would have been his senior year in college, he did very well in Kinston (A+) before advancing to Akron (AA) and struggling a bit (with a somewhat low .267 BABIP, but good plate discipline ~1 BB/K). So in terms of age/level, Crowe was already ahead of Laporta unless the Brewers had chosen to debut Laporta at AA. Crowe then struggled last year mightily (or for 2/3 of the season mightily), while Laporta has done very well this year (their respective age 23 seasons). This year, they are both doing quite well at AA.
Can that one bad season really be so significant in evaluating the two players? Yes, Laporta has hugely projectable power which he has consistently shown in his limited action, a skill Crowe does not have. Crowe on the other hand has considerable speed (93 SB, 13 3B). Power is a much much much better asset than speed and Laporta is a much better prospect than Crowe. But is Crowe really condemned to worthlessness because of one bad season. Was his margin for error really that slim?
by APV on Jul 10, 2008 1:54 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
It’s a little hard to tell how much you’re just playing devil’s advocate on this
LaPorta is only now completing one full year as a pro hitter with wood bats — 507 career PA — and he’s already a manifestly good hitter. Solid average, excellent secondary numbers. Crowe, in addition to being 14 months older and despite missing some time with minor injuries, has over 1500 PA — and at the Double-A, level it’s almost three times as much. I don’t think you have much doubt what LaPorta would do with another year of growth and another 1000 PA in Double-A, which of course he’ll never get.
My issue with Crowe isn’t one bad season, it’s (a) the total lack of one good season and (b) his ability to be totally awful for months at a time, on top of© the slim margin for error for a player with his skill to be successful. In deference to your power vs. speed point, let’s set aside pure power numbers and just look at extra base hits. Crowe has just 65 extra-base hits in essentially two full seasons at Double-A, just one for every 15 PA — and it wasn’t much better in Kinston.
Not unlike a low-K-rate pitcher, a hitter without real power and without significant defensive value needs to do everything else right — he need not only to draw a lot of walks, he needs to be a prodigious contact hitter (like Victor), he needs to spray doubles everywhere, all the time, and hell yes he needs to do this by the time he’s 23-24 in Double-A, and hell yes he needs to be a guy who doesn’t go into a little funk for 2-3 months, ever.
My question for you is: Would you be posting any of this if he didn’t have a 921 OPS right now? And if your answer is “no,” don’t you think it’s a little rash to be turned around by a mere two months of solid performance, in his third year in the league, and propped up by BABIP? I just did a quick BIP-normalizing, came up with an estimate of 814 for his projected OPS.
by Jay on Jul 11, 2008 11:43 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
I am playing devil’s advocate to some degree…but I’m also trying to raise the issue that once a prospect has fallen off their major-league trajectory, it is possible for them to regain some of their previous status. Not all of it, as you can never completely return to that trajectory. But potential can be salvaged. But it means playing very very well. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if Crowe wasn’t doing very well right now…but he is. As I said before, he’s doing what you would hope he would do to regain something of what he once was. And it’s not just this season. If you’ll recall, at the end of June last season Crowe’s OPS was hovering around .550. He finished the season just shy of .700. Not good, but it does mean his 2nd half was somewhere around an .850 OPS with an OBP over .400 (I can’t find his in-season splits for some reason)...which means he’s got almost a full season at AA of OPSing in the upper .800s. Crowe is not a great prospect but he’s also not a completely lost cause. His margin of error at this point IS near zero…but he’s not washed up yet.
by APV on Jul 11, 2008 1:18 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
That’s fair enough.
I see it as more of a spectrum of prospectness. You have the high-impact guys, and I generally feel that you can pick those out pretty easily by using age/level/performance. Then you have solid guys which is more like Hodges — I see Green and Brantley as somewhere in between those two levels, solid-impact, which is why I think I like that trade.
Now, if a guy stumbles, he can recover, but he probably can’t recover his full initial status unless he recovers within a year, and completely. DAVID HUFF would be the key example of that. He was never high-impact, because he wasn’t young enough, but we hoped he’d come out of the draft as a solid-impact guy, but he was pretty fringe instead. Now, with a really stellar year all-around in the very next season, he restores his potential status as solid-impact.
For most guys, though, a turnaround will result in a solid but lesser status. Lofgren looked like a high-impact guy after 2006. He stumbled in 2007, but he was still solid-impact. If he electrifies in 2008, he’s back to high-impact — but anything less than that, and he’s still just a solid-impact guy. Now, after a big stumble, we have to see him as merely a solid prospect.
So now we have Crowe — who, like Huff, was a guy we hoped to get a solid-impact performance out of — and frankly even that expectation required squinting if you ask me — but we never really did. Two more years of stumbling around — apparently having more trouble switching from CF to RF than LaPorta did from 1B to RF — and now finally he’s doing well over several months (compromise characterization). But he’s not electrifying, and it also didn’t happen in the next season. So not only did he never attain solid-impact status, he’s borderline for being a soild prospect at all — even after this “comeback.”
You just can’t get that youth back once you have a couple bad seasons, and that makes anyone a lower-ceiling guy than he used to be, and his ceiling was never all that high. You can find guys who came back, but it would be a lot harder to find examples of guys who went on to make it look like those setbacks didn’t matter.
by Jay on Jul 11, 2008 3:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
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