AP Photo/Winslow Townson
Presumably, you’ve all heard by now that John Lackey was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals (along with prospect Corey Littrell) for OF Allen Craig and RHP Joe Kelly. Most pundits and analysts seem to view the trade favorably and consider it a “win” for both sides. The Cardinals receive a much more reliable starting pitcher (read: better) than Joe Kelly, in John Lackey, and the Red Sox receive some interesting pieces who may or may not be part of the future.
Joe Kelly is young and cost-controlled, and he has a decent profile (mid-90’s fastball, average secondary offerings). As many others have noted, he projects to be a back-of-the-rotation starter or a reliever. His peripherals are largely underwhelming, but he induces a lot of groundballs. Allen Craig is the other major piece, and he’s a solid, if unspectacular, major league regular. He is, however, in the midst of an abysmal campaign. He’s been worth -0.6 fWAR for the year, with a wRC+ of 81 and a Padres-esque OPS of .638. He’s historically been a mediocre defender and a non-factor on the basepaths, and so far in 2014, he’s maintained those subpar levels of performance.
I don’t mean to be too pessimistic, because I really do like this deal in the aggregate. There’s a lot of upside to this deal, and not a tremendous amount of downside. In 1818 career plate appearances he has an OPS of .803 and a career wRC+ of 123. He strikes out in less than 20% of his plate appearances, which is an impressive stat in this era, and he hits a ton of line drives (22.8% of his hits go for line drives).
Allen Craig was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals with the 30th pick in the eighth round (256th overall). He had just completed his final year of college ball at UC Berkeley, where over four years and 195 games he recorded 27 home runs, 48 doubles, 78 walks to 100 strikeouts and an .OPS of .867. That’s a pretty outstanding college career. How he fell so low in the draft is a bit of a mystery, but John Sickels at SB Nation’s Minor League Ball posits that it may have been because of some doubts about his plate discipline and his defense (he played shortstop at Cal), “[d]efense is an issue. He has a strong arm, but lacks consistency with his footwork…” As Jerry Crasnick at ESPN.com notes, “[t]he biggest rap against Craig is that he lacks a natural position defensively.” It seems that scouts were only viewing Craig through the prism of “flawed shortstop,” rather than changing their perspectives to envision how else his tools could be utilized to help the organization. Another major factor in not being drafted very high was his relatively easy signability. He had graduated college already, so he didn’t really have any leverage. Either he wanted to play or he didn’t. Teams were most likely focused on younger players in the earlier rounds. The Cards signed him for just $15,000.
Despite hitting well at every level of the minors, Craig was never ranked very highly on prospect lists. He was never on a Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus or Keith Law Top 100 Prospects list, and he was never considered one of St. Louis’ top three prospects. The highest he ever got on any list was in 2010, when he was ranked the Cardinals’ 5th best prospect, by Baseball America. This is all a little strange because at no point at his minor league career did he demonstrate any sustained struggle or inability to adapt. Here is his minor league triple slash line: .308/.369/.518. He also had 173 walks to 362 strikeouts, which is not a terrible ratio; at the very least, it’s not a plate discipline red flag. So why were scouts so down on him? In a piece in 2012, John Sickels refers to giving Allen Craig the “Josh Willingham This Guy Can F****** Hit Award. This award goes annually to a player who can fucking hit, but who has positional problems, mediocre tools, or some other issue that makes scouts doubt him a little.” It seems that in spite of his exceptional hit tools, Craig was never considered elite because he lacked a defined role. Unfortunately, this line of thinking is still pervasive in nearly every organization. Too many teams have players that aren’t being given opportunities simply because they aren’t sure what to do with them. Some teams, notably the Athletics (surprise, surprise), have exploited this market inefficiency. Now, perhaps it’s a stretch to call it a market inefficiency. Everyone has read Moneyball, or at least seen the movie, and nearly every front office in baseball understands advanced metrics and how to apply them to their teams, their minor league organizations, their ballparks, and their respective league/division. However, this prejudice against the Allen Craig-type player still persists in certain corners of the game, and it must be eradicated.
Since breaking into the majors in 2010, he’s largely been a very successful hitter, much like he was in the minors. As referenced above, he has a career OPS of .803. Since his debut, he has split his time between the outfield (primarily right field) and first base. He came up as an outfielder but shifted to first base after a couple years and then shifted back to the outfield this season to make room for Matt Adams at first base. Before the start of the 2013 seasons, the Cardinals rewarded his consistent offensive success with a contract extension worth $31 million over five seasons, with a team option in the sixth year for $13 million (or a $1 million buyout). Between the extremely team-friendly contract and Craig’s track record of success, there’s obviously a lot of upside to this trade. However, Craig has yet to play a full season in the majors. The closest he came to playing a full season was last year, when he played in 134 contests. In 2011, he missed 13 games due to a left groin strain, and he missed an additional 54 games after fracturing his knee by running into a wall. In 2012, he began his season on the DL, recovering from knee surgery, missing 22 games. Later that season he missed 14 games with a hamstring strain, and in 2013 he missed the final 23 games of the season with a right foot sprain.
Between Craig’s lengthy injury history and this season’s sustained offensive ineptitude, there seems to be palpable downside to this deal, as well. As mentioned before, Craig is having a pretty horrible season: .237/.291/.348. He’s striking out more than any other year in his career, with the exception of his rookie season, and he’s walking less than he ever has. He’s hitting way more groundballs than he ever has (2014: 56.3%; Career: 46.6%), and he’s hitting fewer line drives this year than he has for his career (2014: 19.7%; Career: 22.9%). Somewhat strangely, his plate discipline has actually improved a bit this year, as he’s been swinging at fewer pitches outside the zone and more inside the zone than he has historically. Additionally, so far this season, he’s made contact on more total pitches (84%) than he has in any other season. ESPN’s Hot Zone map for Craig shows that he’s having a tremendous amount of difficulty hitting pitches in the top third of the strike zone this season, especially when compared to last season, when he punished pitches thrown at the letters. He’s also struggled with pitches inside, another area where he excelled in 2013. As I’m not a scout (#NotAScout) or a hitting coach, it’d be imprudent of me to attempt to diagnose the source of these problems, but there’s evidently some issue in his approach, or more likely his swing/stance, that is at the root of his season-long offensive struggle.
In a press conference, after his trade deadline machinations, Ben Cherington commented that Craig would see time in left field, rather than right field, where he’d been playing so far this year with the Cardinals. Yoenis Cespedes will occupy right field for the Red Sox. It seems like he might split a decent amount of time in left field with Daniel Nava, as John Farrell said, via Brian MacPherson of the Provience Journal, “I’m not going to say we are in a strict platoon…[b]ut, at the same time, we are going to make sure Daniel gets on the field.” Much has been said about these moves being designed to have an immediate impact, or, more accurately, an impact on 2015, with this season’s outcome being a foregone conclusion, but things are still a little murky. It seems as if the rest of the 2014 season may be an opportunity for the Red Sox to rebuild Craig’s depleted value and perhaps trade him in the offseason for some pitching help. Cherington is an intelligent GM, and I imagine he has a plan (and contingency plans) for what to do with Allen Craig and the rest of the crowded outfield. So rather than worry about how all the pieces will fit, and when the pieces will finally fit, I’m going to enjoy this infusion of new blood and root for these new faces like I’ve been rooting for them my whole life, because that’s what fans do. Right?
(All stats courtesy of Fangraphs.com. Injury information from BaseballProspectus.com)