FLIP:   Crawford is a fine player, but he's not worth some of the insane prices I've been hearing.  No .332 OBP "lead-off" hitter is.

CHOP:   If the essential point here is that Carl Crawford is not an 8.0 RC/game franchise player, I agree with that.

. Crawford is Johnny Damon with a glove, and as much as I like Johnny Damon, he's the third or fourth Myrmidon onto the beach.  He carries the spears for the Ortiz and Manny, or the Tex and ARod.  I'm not taking Johnny Damon and making him the face of my franchise.

Crawford is a star table-setter.  You get two bats behind him and Ichiro (say, Branyan and Dunn) and you're talking about winning the World Series.

...........

Just the same, let's remember that Crawford has been at 6.3 RC/27 for the last four years, excepting the finger injuries in 2008 ...

And those four years were ages 24-27.  His EYE has evolved from 0.28 to 0.52 during that time.   A career path similar to Carlos Beltran's is not out of the question for Crawford.   Crawford's ceiling has not yet been established.

Give me three Carl Crawfords and one of them is going to leap a very large plateau in 2010 or 2011 (and one will just put up ten more seasons like 2009, while another will be nicked-and-dinged by injuries the rest of his career).

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FLIP:  I've been touting Crawford as a solution all offseason...  I keep slotting him in at #3 as the most talented non-Ichiro hitter we've got, and putting Mr. Gutierrez in that 2-hole.  Am I insane?

CHOP:  Bill James proved long ago, like in the early 1990's, that traditional batting-order cliches have practically no value.

Sabermetricians more-or-less want the best hitters at the top of the lineup, whatever order.   It matters a lot more, that you get your 6.0 RC/27 guys their extra 50 AB's, than that the #2 hitter can perform a hit-and-run.

.........

If our only offseason add is Crawford, then we've got three plus hitters, them being Ichiro, Crawford, and Branyan.  Slotting them 1-3-4 is fine.

From a traditionalist point-of-view, I don't care for all the strikeouts, and low BB, low HR in the three slot.  And I don't care for SB's, rather than BB's, in front of Russell Branyan.  There are good reasons not to be running in front of your HR guy.  A homer scores a runner from first base, so why the risk.

Would much rather have Ichiro-Crawford running back-to-back, with a legit OBP type #3 and Branyan #4, with Gutierrez doing what he does best:  a pretty good bat for the bottom of the order.

But if you're going to have a mediocre offense again, then Ichiro-Guti-Crawford-Branyan would be as good a way as any to do it.

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Awesome to be pencilling Crawford into our lineup before we've heard what the rumor is :- )

My $0.02,

Dr D