Giants first baseman Brandon Belt just received an award as the National League Player of the Week. His teammate, Brandon Crawford, may soon be recognized as the National League Player of the Month.
After posting a .187 batting average through his first 27 games, the Giants’ shortstop has been on a tear during the month of May, posting a slash line of .444/.462/.639 and 16 RBIs in 19 games. The hot streak has brought Crawford’s batting average back up to .302, nearly .050 points above his career average of .254.
The question now is, can Crawford sustain a .300 average for the remainder of the season, or will he regress back to the mean? That’s exactly the question Brian Murphy posted to Duane Kuiper on Tuesday morning’s Murph & Mac Show. Kuiper believes that an adjustment to Crawford’s swing means the shortstop’s improvement at the plate is more likely to be sustainable than one would normally think.
“I think a lot of times it is the back of the baseball card, but if you make an adjustment and all of the sudden everything clicks, it doesn’t really matter how old you are, yeah you can all of the sudden go from .250 to .300,” Kuiper said. “Look at Justin Turner. Nobody made a more remarkable change than he did. So absolutely.”
Turner was a career .260 hitter for the first five years of his career, before making an adjustment to his approach, that included a high leg kick, during the 2014 offseason. Since that point, Turner has been one of the best hitting third baseman in the majors, posting a slash line of .303/.378/.500.
“How about this, (Crawford) credits Pablo Sandoval and Gregor Blanco,” Kuiper said. “Two guys from Venezuela, they do a pretty good job of speaking English, and they found something in Crawford’s swing, and he made an adjustment because of what they suggested. Since then he’s just totally gone off. So yeah, I absolutely think that he can sustain this. I mean he’s going to have a bump in the road, everybody does, but he can sustain it, he absolutely can.”
Listen to the full interview below. To hear Kuiper on Crawford start from 13:30.