ST. LOUIS — One day after Brandon Crawford made his major-league pitching debut, his scoreless inning at home against the Chicago Cubs remained all the pregame talk in the Giants clubhouse.
Well, to be fair, Crawford was doing most of the talking.
“Just 19 more and I can be listed as a two-way player,” Crawford said.
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Crawford’s fastball reached 89.7 mph. He flipped curveballs and landed a slider. He overcame a four-pitch walk to the leadoff batter, got a swing-and-miss from the Cubs’ Christopher Morel, stranded two runners and walked off the mound with a perfect 0.00 ERA. Giants pitchers praised his performance through clenched teeth.
“I really don’t want to give him any compliments, but it was nice,” Alex Cobb said. “And not really surprising. I mean, I saw him throw a bullpen in Milwaukee, so …”
Wait. What?
“Yeah,” Cobb said. “TrackMan and everything. His curveball had pretty good shape.”
He can do more than pitch 😎 pic.twitter.com/wPKh6gRIYN
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) June 13, 2023
Asked if this was true, Crawford’s expression changed.
“Who leaked that information?” Crawford said. “Was it Logan (Webb)? Or Cobb. It was Cobb, right?”
Crawford confessed. He really did throw a bullpen May 26 in Milwaukee. He hadn’t started the first game of the four-game series at American Family Field. He wasn’t in the lineup for the second game, either. And for the first time in his 13-year career, the Giants were playing the hotter hand at shortstop. Rookie Casey Schmitt was hitting too well to stick on the bench.
And so, well, let’s allow Crawford to take it from here.
“I’d taken (batting practice) and everything the day before. So I got all my ground-ball work done. I was just there at the field and was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to go mess around with the relievers and throw the football with them.’ I told Bailes (pitching coach Andrew Bailey) I was going to throw a bullpen. I think he thought I was joking at first — until I actually got out there. He was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, see you down there.’ I’m like, ‘All right, cool.’ I got loose, played long toss and everything, and then walked down to the bullpen. I waited down there for, like, 15 minutes. Then Bailes and Webby and one of our bullpen catchers came down. So Webby threw his bullpen and I waited, like, another 10 minutes. By that time, I’d waited 25 or 30 minutes. So I only threw, like, seven pitches. It wasn’t a true bullpen. But it was the first time I threw off a mound in a while.”
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Then everyone huddled around the TrackMan monitor.
“I threw two or three curveballs, and one had my spin rate at 2,650 (rpms),” Crawford said. “Which, I remember, we faced Rich Hill when we got back home, and one curveball he threw me was 2,600. Just saying.”
Crawford’s firmest fastball off the bullpen mound was 89 mph. Webb said he couldn’t bear to watch because if Crawford hurt himself, he didn’t want to witness it. But Cobb was critiquing every pitch. Cobb told Crawford that would translate to 92 or 93 mph in a major-league game once you add the extra adrenaline.
So Crawford’s top velocity Sunday wasn’t his peak velocity?
“No, especially with the very little non-warmup I did,” he said. “I feel like I toned it back yesterday, tried not to do too much … after throwing six straight balls.”
Giants assistant pitching coach J.P. Martinez was in agreement with Giants starters and relievers. He didn’t want to compliment Crawford, who had no need for further encouragement. But Martinez had to be honest.
“Hitting 90 impressed me,” Martinez said. “Like, a guided ‘I don’t want to walk another guy’ 90. The fastball had a little verty (vertical movement) in there. Usually, you tell a guy to throw it as slow as possible in the strike zone. But no way he’s throwing 45 mph after asking for the ball for a decade.”
Two things Crawford didn’t accomplish: recording a strikeout (he was reminded that J.D. Davis racked up four of them while making three appearances for the Houston Astros in 2017-18) and hitting a home run as a pitcher.
Not that Crawford had the opportunity to bat. But maybe if he does this again in the ninth with the Giants trailing big on the road, he’d get a crack at an official at-bat as a pitcher. That’s how Luis Gonzalez came to be the last Giants pitcher to hit a home run, which he accomplished here at Busch Stadium last season. Gonzalez might leave out the minor detail that he hit his homer off Albert Pujols.
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And yes, Crawford is already thinking about his next mound opportunity.
“I didn’t get to do a few of the things I planned on,” Crawford said. “I was going to do the (Johnny) Cueto shimmy, I was going to drop down and throw a Tyler Rogers slider. I didn’t throw the changeup at all.”
First and foremost, though, Crawford is still a shortstop — even if it was a little surprising that he started there Monday one day after his pitching appearance, especially with a left-hander, Matthew Liberatore, on the mound for the Cardinals.
“I was surprised, too,” Crawford said, smiling. “I thought with Liberatore pitching (on Monday), maybe that’s why they let me go out there (on Sunday). But I got the lineup last night and I was in there, so …”
He also got a flood of text messages, one funnier than the next. One of his favorites came from Matt Cain.
“He told me to make sure I get on my cardio, do rotator cuff exercises and get some ice on it,” Crawford said.
Suddenly, Crawford is back to being the hottest hand at shortstop. He entered Monday with an .883 OPS in 11 games since altering his pregame hitting regimen, then went 2 for 4 while driving in the tiebreaking run in the eighth inning of the Giants’ 4-3 victory over the Cardinals.
Meanwhile, Schmitt went 0 for 4 and saw a total of eight pitches over his four plate appearances. He’s in a 5-for-36 slump and has the highest chase rate (50.9 percent) among all 327 major-league hitters with at least 100 plate appearances.
“Craw’s swinging the bat really well,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said. “We knew this was a possibility — that he’d be healthy and string and contributing to wins.”
Hate to mention this, but … the more productive Crawford is as a shortstop, the less likely the Giants will be to risk putting him on the mound again. Or let him throw another bullpen session.
Mitch Haniger contributed a pair of RBI hits, including a tying single in the seventh inning, but Patrick Bailey might have been the biggest difference-maker in the series-opening victory. He was entrusted to call the entire game for Webb, who shook only a couple of times. Bailey made a perfect throw to catch Jordan Walker attempting to steal second base in the third inning. And the rookie catcher reached base three times. His one-out double in the eighth that preceded Crawford’s tiebreaking hit came on the 11th pitch of his at-bat against former Giant Chris Stratton.
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Even when Bailey doesn’t contribute with the bat, he’s already beginning to establish himself as a reliable defensive asset every time he catches.
“It’s going to get to the point where guys stop running,” Webb said. “They tested him out and he showed he’s pretty good. I noticed later in the game, nobody was running anymore. You’ve got to respect his arm. It’s special.”
Right-hander Keaton Winn caught a red-eye flight from Sacramento, Calif., and arrived in St. Louis at 8 a.m. after the Giants summoned him to the major-league roster for the first time. When he walked onto the field at Busch Stadium, he needed to take 15 minutes by himself to soak in the sights.
It wasn’t just his first time in the big leagues. It was his first time in a big-league stadium.
“I mean, I probably had a couple opportunities to go to a Cubs game or something,” Winn said. “But I never did.”
First looks at Keaton 👀 pic.twitter.com/eWx7yTwR1K
— SFGiants (@SFGiants) June 12, 2023
Winn hails from Ollie, Iowa, which is roughly a three-hour drive from St. Louis and small even by small-town Iowa standards. The 2020 Census recorded 201 residents in 58 households. Thanks to Winn’s promotion, Ollie emptied out. Hopefully, someone stayed behind to feed the dogs.
His first call-up couldn’t have come in a more convenient place. Winn said his wife’s family already happened to buy tickets for Monday’s game three weeks ago. And although Winn split his loyalties between the Cubs and Cardinals, he continues to have a place of affection for St. Louis right-hander Adam Wainwright.
“I wanted to throw that curveball,” Winn said.
It’s Winn’s splitter that got him to the big leagues. He figured something was up when he got pushed back from Saturday’s start at Sacramento, then Alex Wood took his turn Sunday while making a rehab start. With right-hander Tristan Beck down for a couple of days because of workload, the Giants optioned him and turned to Winn for a fresh arm.
There’s no guarantee he makes his debut at Busch Stadium. But now he can say he’s spent a day in the big leagues — and at a big-league ballpark.
(Photo of Brandon Crawford pitching Sunday: Lachlan Cunningham / Getty Images)