Mariners Report Cards: Grading the 2021 season for JP Crawford

2021 was a breakout season for JP Crawford. I’m not sure that I necessarily need to eat crow when it comes to how he did, but I do know that I spent a lot of time last offseason trying to figure out if he was going to be good enough to be the answer for the Mariners at shortstop, long term.

I’m going to have to say that the answer is a pretty strong yes. It’s more than just the stats though. It’s his demeanor on the field. How he acts during the game. The joy and passion you see while he’s playing. Think back to a fair amount of the daily highlights you would see from the Mariners, and the GIFS that would come across your feed, and JP Crawford was usually the one that was involved in them.

I couldn’t figure out what to put in here, so I went with this one. Really though, you should just search for him on Twitter or online somewhere and see the plethora of results that come up. He’s a joy to watch, and I think that enthusiasm was infectious to the team, helping them perform even better this season. It’s a part of viewing how well a guy did, and I think it’s why so many people liked last year’s Mariners team.

JP Crawford had a pretty darn good 2021 season

2020 was easily Crawford’s best season. He hit .255 and won a gold glove. However… it was 2020. It was a short season and a relatively small sample. Would it be something that he would be able to keep doing for an entire season? Before 2020, he had been a career .222/.320/.367 hitter through 621 PAs in 165 games. Those were his age 22/23/24 seasons, so he was still a relatively inexperienced youngster.

Well, for those out there who didn’t think that Crawford would be able to hit .255 for a full season, you were correct. Not in the way that he would do worse, but that he would do even better than that.

.273/.338/.376, 89 R, 9 HR, 37 2B!

Yeah, that’s a darn good season. It’s even better when you realize that JP Crawford was hitting .246/.310/.328 through May. From June 1st on (a stretch of 106 games), he would hit .284/.350/.397 with 34 doubles and eight home runs. That’s pretty good numbers for, what many assumed, would be a defensive-oriented shortstop.

Crawford was smoking doubles all season and really started to get in the groove once the weather started warming up. All around, it was easily his best season as a big leaguer and an amazing sign of things to come. He ended up with a 3.0 oWAR and a 1.8 dWAR, good for a total number of 3.8.

For a guy that’s not technically into his prime, that’s pretty darn good. It was better than most people expected, even though it’s probably up there with what everyone was hoping for. If you had told Mariners fans what his numbers would end up at before the season started, I think we all would have been ecstatic.

We’re finally here. What is JP Crawford’s grade for the 2021 season? Here’s the thing. You can’t (well, I won’t) grade him in comparison to the other top shortstops in the league. That isn’t the player he is. He isn’t going to hit 30 homers. He isn’t going to steal 30 bases. He will never be Trae Turner. He did everything we expected of him, and more.

It’s why I’m comfortable giving JP Crawford an A on this season. Now, it may be a 93.0, just barely getting into the “A” grade instead of being an A-, but it’s still a legit A. A hotter start would’ve been nice. Winning the Gold Glove again would’ve been cool. I’m stoked with the season that Crawford had, and would take it 100 out of 100 times. JP Crawford deserves an A for the 2021 season, and I’m excited to see what he does in 2022.