Production Levels and Carl Crawford

So I've made it an entire 3 posts since promising you guys to not talk about the Los Angeles Dodgers so much. That ends here and now. But I think you guys will be happy with the info I'm bringing to you, and it might be something I can turn into a recurring series. Today's subject is potential fantasy zombie (all credit for the term goes to the Nate Ravitz and Matthew Berry of the 06010), Carl Crawford. Crawford has gotten off to a fast start this season going 5/9 as of this writing (it does not include Friday night's game). Obviously none of us think that he will be vintage Crawford, but what I wanted to figure out was, what exactly is his value, based on how much he might produce.

What I'm going to do, is take the average of his 2009 season and immediately reduce his line by 20%. I am doing this because he's receiving more days off and could easily run into some setbacks or additional injuries. From there, I want to show what that season would look like, and then show what 90% of that line would look like, 80%, and so on down to 60%. What I'm hoping to do through this exercise is show different levels of production for people to choose what the think is reasonable. From there they can determine what Crawford's value is to them, or his trade value is. If you think he can produce at the 80% production-level scenario and his owner thinks he's going to be more towards the 60% end...there could be a match there.

Apologies for the extra space in the table. I had originally planned to show down to 50% effectiveness, but I thought after 60% there was really no need, as the production just isn't there. I am also writing this quite late at night, and don't have the energy to adjust the table in the CMS.

In the top part of the table, I reduced Crawford's playing time, and thus his counting stats while leaving the slash line stats alone, because I wasn't changing his effectiveness. From there, I established a new baseline to go off of, and without altering his playing time (PA and AB) I adjusted both his slash line stats and counting stats because I was adjusting for effectiveness. You can see how quickly the production drops even with Crawford just seeing the playing time reduction. Once you start reducing his effectiveness, his value goes pretty quickly. That said, because of the stolen bases, he retains some value even in the 70% production scenario, though that batting average would be pretty tough to stomach. I would probably still be able to find some value in an 80% Crawford season, and try to sell him immediately if I thought he was going to fall below that line.

Obviously this is a bit of a random construction. My choice of 80% of his original playing time was completely arbitrary, though I was trying to build in the additional days of rest he's getting this season, with his new penchant for getting injured. What I hope this will allow you to do is see how useful Crawford can be; given some fairly severe limitations.

If you guys like this, I'm happy to do it again with some other players in the future (suggestions welcome). In those future instances, I would structure it a little more cleanly, as well as provide some commentary after each of the different production-level scenarios. Again, this has been a crazy few weeks for me, so I just wanted to get the idea out there. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Source Material
Baseball Reference

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