Giants fans already knew Brandon Crawford was great. Coming off consecutive gold gloves and an All-Star appearance in 2015, Crawford has established himself as a bonafide star in the Bay Area, and one of the best two way shortstops in baseball over the last three seasons.
If the rest of the country wasn’t privy to Crawford’s brilliance, they sure are now. The 30-year-old Bay Area native was a key component to the USA’s first ever championship in the World Baseball Classic, providing a number of timely hits, and impressive plays with the glove that will make it hard for anybody to see him as anything other than a national superstar.
Crawford led the star-studded team USA in RBIs (6), had the best batting average for players with more than 20 at-bats (.385) and scored the winning run against team Japan in the semi-final.
Here’s just one of Crawford’s many spectacular defensive plays, this coming in Wednesday night’s final.
As arguably the most productive non-pitcher on the tournament winning team, Crawford could’ve easily won the tournament MVP award over (the also-deserving) Marcus Stroman. Regardless, Crawford played some of his best ball on the national stage, which is a pretty good way to get prepared for the 2017 season.
It’s performance’s like Crawford’s, and Buster Posey’s for that matter, that might make managers and fans rethink the generally anti-WBC sentiment that comes with their team’s star players being asked to spend a portion of spring training playing in strenuous baseball games that add to the already 162 game slog.
If Crawford is able to take his WBC performance into the 2017 season, the event may be seen as a turning point in the career of an already great player, as the moment he became one of the game’s elite.