Credit Crawford’s amazing defensive play to his January work with Mariners’ infield coach
Seattle Mariners infield coach Perry Hill couldn’t manage many words to describing what he saw that Friday night at T-Mobile Park when shortstop J.P. Crawford made arguably the defensive play of the season.
Mariners first baseman Austin Nola compared Crawford’s play — now affectionately referred to as “the throw” — to a Hakeem Olajuwon hook shot. Dylan Moore couldn’t believe how Crawford torqued his body after an already impressive stop to throw the ball to first base with juice.
Amd Mariners manager Scott Servais said it was “about as good a play as you’re every going to see by a shortstop.”
Still it was Hill, who has diligently worked to tap Crawford’s full potential for the past seven months, who offered perhaps the most fitting description of Crawford’s diving stop and incredible throw to first.
“Wow.”
This was the moment when Crawford showed what type of shortstop he could be and why the Mariners envision him as a key piece of their future.
In the ninth inning of a tie game against Detroit during the last homestand — a game the Mariners won with a walk-off single minutes later — Crawford dove to his right, knocking down Jeimer Candelario’s hard hit grounder in hole between short and third. That much Hill expected out of Crawford, who has shown sure-handed defensive ability throughout his professional career.
“I knew he was going to catch the ball when he dove,” Hill said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen after that.”
Crawford popped up almost as soon as the ball hit his glove, barely touched two feet to the ground in shallow left field, before jumping up and throwing the ball across his body in midair to Nola at first for the out, despite momentum carrying him completely in the opposite direction.
“I think he wowed all of us,” Hill said.
The 67-year-old HIll has seen his share of outstanding defensive. He’s mentored seven Gold Glove winners — most recently second baseman Dee Gordon in Miami in 2015 — at each of the four infield positions during his 24 seasons as a big-league coach.
He’s led three different clubs to league-best fielding percentage marks in that span, and Servais has referred to Hill as “one of the best in the game” who takes it personally when his infielders aren’t playing to potential.
Helping shape Crawford into an everyday shortstop who could consistently perform at an above-average level was an offseason project for Hill last winter.
“I was with the Marlins for years and years, and I saw him with the Phillies,” Hill said of Crawford. “He was a good player there — he was a No. 1 pick (by Philadelphia in 2013) — but what I saw there to what I see to this day is leaps and bounds (better).”
Crawford was about a month removed from being traded from the Phillies in exchange for Jean Segura and a pair of pitchers when he and Hill met in Peoria, Ariz., for three days of work in January.
The two worked on Crawford’s throwing mechanics. They worked on reforming his footwork, so he wasn’t crossing his feet, or allowing his feet to take him in directions that would make it more difficult to make accurate throws.
It was simple work, both have said. Fundamental. But it stuck.
“We kind of laid the foundation of what we wanted to do,” Hill said. “And, to his credit, he went home for three weeks before he came back for spring training, and the things we talked about and went over, he almost had them mastered.”
“He really saved my career,” Crawford said back in May. “He kind of just simplified everything up, and then it picked up right from there (in spring training). We worked in January, and he gave me some (fundamental) stuff to work on, and it helped me so much.”
Retaining the information from an early work session like his and Crawford’s in January isn’t something all players can do, Hill said. Some players have to begin with the basics again once camp rolls around. But, with Crawford, there was no starting over.
“He wants to be good, so he applies himself, and takes every opportunity,” Hill said. “He doesn’t take a ground ball off. He plays every ground ball when we’re working on our routine things like it’s the seventh game of the World Series.
“Really it’s his work ethic that’s enabled him to jump up the ladder a little bit. … He did (the work) on his own, so we were really off to a head start once we all came together in February.”
Tim Beckham eventually won Seattle’s starting shortstop job out of camp, but Crawford excelled with Triple-A Tacoma, was promoted in May, and has taken over the everyday role with confidence.
“He’s being very aggressive,” Servais said. “He’s going after balls. He wants the ball hit to him. You can see it. He’s in on ever pitch, expecting it to be hit to him, and he’s finishing plays off.”
Entering Saturday night’s game in Houston, Crawford had committed seven errors this season in 56 games, but none in his past 28 appearances across more than 237 innings.
“It’s still a learning process,” Hill said. “There’s still a lot more to go. But, now we want to (show) repetition and consistency. … We don’t quite working. We do the same things we did way back on Day 1, and we build on those.”
Crawford says his progress wouldn’t be so far along without Hill.
“I feel like I can compete with the best of them on defense now, thanks to him,” he said. “We just get out there and work every day. It’s little, simple stuff, and it works. Without him, I don’t think I’d be here.”
By here, he means making incredible plays any infielder could envy. Hill said his group gets competitive during pregame drills, which encourages growth for the infield as a whole. In July, Seattle’s infielders posted a .986 fielding percentage mark — the best in the American League — with just six errors. That’s a long way from the team’s shaky defensive performances early in the year.
“Defense is contagious,” Hill said. “One guy makes a play, and the other guys want to make a play. ‘I can do that, I can do that.’ When we do our early ground ball work, there’s a little competition between them. It’s good.”
And, it certainly helps them appreciate when a teammate makes a mind-blowing play, like the one Crawford made against Detroit.
“A lot of people undervalue it, they’ll forget about it tomorrow,” Moore said. “But, we won’t.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2019 at 5:04 PM.
