3 stats that prove Mariners shortstop JP Crawford's 2023 season wasn't a fluke

Imagine you are back at this point in the offseason in 2023. You are heading into Spring Training with the Mariners coming off of a playoff berth, and feeling good about their upcoming season. Things are looking up, and it's time to make some bold predictions.

Sure, their record has to be on there. Probably something about Julio, and maybe Kirby or Gilbert as well. Teo or Geno, Dumper, maybe you are gonna predict a big Kelenic season. However, there is one that likely wasn't on there, and if it was, didn't end up the same as what ended up occuring during the season.

Is that cryptic enough (or maybe just confusing)? Who I'm talking about is JP Crawford, and the season that he ended up putting together. No one predicted that he would lead the league in walks or hit 19 HR, because there was no indicator that he would do anything like that outside of his time spent at Driveline. It's one of the reasons baseball is so fun. Predictions occasionally need to be wild and crazy, because they do happen. If you don't believe me, just look at Ronald Acuna's stats.

It becomes more than just 2023 for JP Crawford. Whether fair or not, Mariners fans are constantly wondering if he can either keep getting better, or now that he is "good" on offense, keep it up. We used to wonder if he was good enough to be the team's shortstop. Now, we wonder if he is good enough to repeat what he did in 2023 and kickstart the top of the Mariners lineup. Here are three reasons why it's going to happen in 2024.

The Fly Ball/Pull Rate paired with the Solid Contact/Barrel Rate

You could tell something was different about the way that Crawford was hitting, and it's reflected when you go and look at his underlying stats. Not blessed with a lot of power, Crawford used to work on hitting the ball up the middle and oppo more often than most. His Pull/Straight/Push rate from 2020-2022 was 32.9/37.8/29.2 (rounding). In 2023, it was 43.2/34.1/27.2. He was only going oppo a little less, but he was turning on the ball a lot more, just over 1 in 10 times he put the ball in play.

That's not always a good indicator, as you will sometimes see it by a player who is trying to only hit homers, usually later in their career. However, JP was pairing this with an increase in both his solid contact and his barrel rate. His barrel rate in that 3 year span was about 2.1% with a 4.6% solid contact rate. Those numbers jumped to 4.8% and 6.6%, respectively, in 2024.

This wasn't a straight home run swing, though. His line drive rate stayed the same, but he just shifted to a lower ground ball rate and a higher fly ball rate. More balls hard hit, and more of them in the air off the barrel. His exit velo jumped from a bottom 5-10% of the league up to bottom 30%, which is still a 2.5-3.0 mph difference, and a big change. That's a full season of increasing all aspects of hitting the ball harder, more consistently hitting it harder, and having it leave the bat at a better angle.

Driveline changing the way he handles secondary pitches

This all could stem back to Driveline, and the work that Crawford was able to put in with them had a massive impact on how he handled himself at the plate. You can see that in both of the earlier slides. Think about the basics in baseball, and Crawford had them covered. Don't swing at bad pitches, swing at strikes, and hit the ball hard. Ding. Ding. Ding. He was doing all three.

He got better at hitting too, though. Crawford destroyed fastballs last season. I'm not saying that just to say it either. JP was T-9th in all of baseball in Run Value against fastballs with a mark of 17. This says it better than I can, but essentially, Run Value adds up every occurence when you finished with that pitch, and gives you the run total. So all year, JP Crawford was a +17 total on fastballs. That's really, really good.

It was also a big increase over prior years. Going back, he had marks of -4, -7, and -1 against fastballs. Again, massive increase. It wasn't just fastballs, either. JP did struggle against sliders in 2023 (which oddly was his first negative season ever against them), but had big positives against sinkers, changeups, and curveballs. His total Run Value was 25, compared to -4, -4, and -1 over the previous three years.

Sliders were his second most seen pitch, but sinkers were 3rd, changeups 4th, and curves 6th, adding up to 30.7% of what he saw. Driveline made a difference, and JP Crawford was able to be one of the best offensive shortstops in baseball in 2023. All these stats indicate that there is a good chance he continues on, and proves that 2023 wasn't a fluke, but the start of something new.