[Mick]

Crawford won a gold glove in ‘ 21. He was hurt a good portion of last year.  Looked awful?  Seriously? 

Villar hasn’t played enough to make any conclusions on.  

Flores is a utility infielder.

Yes, Crawford looked seriously awful. In 2022, the Bleacher Report ran article on the top 25 shortstops in MLB.  In other words, they only left out five of them. Brandon Crawford was one of them, despite the fact that he was third in the league in games played by a shortstop. Among the major fielding categories in 2022, he only finished in the top five in one category: errors, in which he was #3. He had fifty fewer chances in 2022 than in 2021 and nearly double the errors. Team fielding at shortstop, the Giants finished 28th of 30, and oh by the way, the other shortstops on the team actually lifted the Rtot rate. 

As for Villar, you're right, he doesn't have much experience. The Giants finished 13 of 15 at 3B in the NL. Villar had 5 errors, the others playing 3B had 17. Hope Casey Schmitt is ready soon. He had two errors in 29 games at 3B in AA.

Agreed, Flores is the very definition of a utility infielder. Whatever he is, statistically speaking, he's considerably better at 1B than he is anywhere else.

 Crawford is the anchor of the defense.  Not an issue. He had some injury issues. Struggled mid season, no question. But he’s a 4 time gold glove winner.  He’s also gonna have a bit of a chip on his shoulder.  I don’t expect him to hit much.  But defensively, he is the one guy in the infield I trust.  

BTW - check out Giants record  with and without Crawford last year.  That’s a “metric” that matters a bit.

Crawford is a classic “seeing is believing” kinda player.

I don’t care what the stats say, while Crawford may have lost a step over the years, he is still in the top quartile of SS’s in the game.  And, he still has the BEST arm among all shortstops in MLB not named Oneil Cruz.  He made a number of plays late in the season that defied description.  They had to be seen to be believed.

Interesting you should mention his arm, and yes, he's got that football QB cannon of an arm. In most prior years, he had considerably more fielding errors than throwing errors, which tells me he's making errors out of effort, a great sign. And his range factor improved over last year (4.14 to 3.92 per 9 innings vs. league average of 3.88), so great for BC.

This past year, in which he played the fewest games in the field of any non-COVID, full-time season, he had considerably more throwing errors than fielding errors (11 to 5). I wonder if his skills are breaking down at age 36. Obviously, I hope not.

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I don’t care what the stats say, while Crawford may have lost a step over the years, he is still in the top quartile of SS’s in the game.  And, he still has the BEST arm among all shortstops in MLB not named Oneil Cruz.  He made a number of plays late in the season that defied description.  They had to be seen to be believed.

As for range, his best years were between 25 and 31 (not surprisingly), but hasn't lost any range since then. in fact, he got to more batted balls last year than he did in his gold glove year in 2021.

I do think that Crawford will return to his .253 career batting average this season. He'll bat against the Dodgers less (.214), Diamondbacks (.222) and the Padres less (.184), also he hits a lot of ground balls (as many grounders as line drives and fly balls combined), so he should benefit from the rules governing positioning changes. I think he'll have a good hitting year.

[Mick]

Crawford won a gold glove in ‘ 21. He was hurt a good portion of last year.  Looked awful?  Seriously? 

Villar hasn’t played enough to make any conclusions on.  

Flores is a utility infielder.

Yes, Crawford looked seriously awful. In 2022, the Bleacher Report ran article on the top 25 shortstops in MLB.  In other words, they only left out five of them. Brandon Crawford was one of them, despite the fact that he was third in the league in games played by a shortstop. Among the major fielding categories in 2022, he only finished in the top five in one category: errors, in which he was #3. He had fifty fewer chances in 2022 than in 2021 and nearly double the errors. Team fielding at shortstop, the Giants finished 28th of 30, and oh by the way, the other shortstops on the team actually lifted the Rtot rate. 

As for Villar, you're right, he doesn't have much experience. The Giants finished 13 of 15 at 3B in the NL. Villar had 5 errors, the others playing 3B had 17. Hope Casey Schmitt is ready soon. He had two errors in 29 games at 3B in AA.

Agreed, Flores is the very definition of a utility infielder. Whatever he is, statistically speaking, he's considerably better at 1B than he is anywhere else.

 Crawford is the anchor of the defense.  Not an issue. He had some injury issues. Struggled mid season, no question. But he’s a 4 time gold glove winner.  He’s also gonna have a bit of a chip on his shoulder.  I don’t expect him to hit much.  But defensively, he is the one guy in the infield I trust.  

BTW - check out Giants record  with and without Crawford last year.  That’s a “metric” that matters a bit.

Crawford is a classic “seeing is believing” kinda player.

I don’t care what the stats say, while Crawford may have lost a step over the years, he is still in the top quartile of SS’s in the game.  And, he still has the BEST arm among all shortstops in MLB not named Oneil Cruz.  He made a number of plays late in the season that defied description.  They had to be seen to be believed.

Interesting you should mention his arm, and yes, he's got that football QB cannon of an arm. In most prior years, he had considerably more fielding errors than throwing errors, which tells me he's making errors out of effort, a great sign. And his range factor improved over last year (4.14 to 3.92 per 9 innings vs. league average of 3.88), so great for BC.

This past year, in which he played the fewest games in the field of any non-COVID, full-time season, he had considerably more throwing errors than fielding errors (11 to 5). I wonder if his skills are breaking down at age 36. Obviously, I hope not.

---

I don’t care what the stats say, while Crawford may have lost a step over the years, he is still in the top quartile of SS’s in the game.  And, he still has the BEST arm among all shortstops in MLB not named Oneil Cruz.  He made a number of plays late in the season that defied description.  They had to be seen to be believed.

As for range, his best years were between 25 and 31 (not surprisingly), but hasn't lost any range since then. in fact, he got to more batted balls last year than he did in his gold glove year in 2021.

I do think that Crawford will return to his .253 career batting average this season. He'll bat against the Dodgers less (.214), Diamondbacks (.222) and the Padres less (.184), also he hits a lot of ground balls (as many grounders as line drives and fly balls combined), so he should benefit from the rules governing positioning changes. I think he'll have a good hitting year.