Brandon Crawford's deal with Giants comes at peak value for shortstop
Well, maybe. Probably not.
Still, Brandon Crawford's been the Giants' everyday shortstop for four-plus seasons, and now they've locked him up with a six-year contract through 2021, by which point he'll be 34 and his career will probably be waning.
Of course, Crawford probably wasn't going to become a really good hitter, and yet that's exactly what he did this year. He actually won a Silver Slugger and a Gold Glove, both of them firsts. Which left the Giants in the unfortunate position of negotiating with Crawford's agent when his value will probably never be higher.
But they've bought out two years of salary arbitration eligibility and four years of potential free agency, and $75 million seems like a fairly small price for those six years. Even if both his hitting and his fielding slip some from their lofty highs.
Really, my only quibble is with Crawford's full no-trade protection. But of course there are workarounds there, too. Bottom line, he'll probably be a bargain for the first two or three years of the contract, then not so much in the last year or two. And it's that last year or two in which management will be tested.
Probably.