After all, the way that Crawford fires the ball generates both a confounding look for hitters and seemingly considerable power to his pitches. When he winds, he raises his bare hand in his glove to his face, then draws his right hand back just a few inches behind his ear before unleashing a mix of cutters, four-seamers, sweepers, and splitters from his compact motion.
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“It’s kind of like how Little League coaches teach catchers how to throw — just co*ck it back and fire it,” said Rays manager Kevin Cash. “You don’t see that. You’re not going to teach a guy to do it, I don’t think. But maybe in five years, we’ll say, ‘Hey, maybe we should start telling guys to do that.’ ”
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Crawford looks like a boxer co*cking his arm for a punch, an archer drawing the string of his bow. Thought of another way, the short arm action with the way his hand clamps the ball in some ways resembles the compact, clawing arms of a Jurassic World-style raptor.
“That hits the nail on the head,” said Red Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito, also a practitioner of the short-armed claw.
Descriptions aside, how did Crawford end up with such a motion, and how has it contributed to his emergence as one of the most effective pitchers in the big leagues to this point in 2024?
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Since the start of his professional career, Crawford has had a relatively compact motion, but it looked very different at the start of his minor league career following his selection out of Florida Gulf Coast University in the 16th round of the 2017 draft.
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At that time, he would pull the ball from his glove below the letters, then draw his right hand back behind his hip before a full arm swing.
Crawford emerged as a pitcher with some promise while posting a 26 percent strikeout rate, but his walk rate was a bit high and his stuff a bit light to project as more than a depth starter by the middle of 2019, when a torn ulnar collateral ligament ended his season and ultimately required Tommy John surgery.
With the interruption to his career, Crawford and the Sox didn’t seek to simply have him pick up where he’d left off. They wanted to improve his direction to the plate and tighten his delivery to improve both his control and the power behind his stuff. While other pitchers such as Giolito and Jalen Beeks also employed a ball-to-ear throwing motion, Crawford didn’t pursue such a delivery by design.
“It just happened,” said Crawford. “Through [rehab], my goal was to shorten up, and I think in ‘21, pre-TJ to post-TJ in ‘21, I was definitely shorter, but I wasn’t this short. I didn’t have any intentions of trying to make it even shorter, straight to my ear.
“There’s times where I do think it gets too short. There’s times where I feel my hand hit my neck. It’s insane. But it’s just something that kind of happened. I had no intention of making my arm path that short.
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“I see myself throwing now and I’m like, ‘I don’t know how that happened.’ It’s kind of weird. But it’s working.”
As Crawford returned from Tommy John surgery while pitching in Double A Portland and Triple A Worcester in 2021, he saw steady across-the-board improvements: strike-throwing, velocity, movement.
Moreover, with the more compact delivery, Crawford found that his body, especially his shoulder, rebounded more easily from starts. Given all of that progress, the Sox weren’t going to question what was happening with his delivery.
“Honestly, ever since I’ve gone shorter, I haven’t really had a whole lot of issues with [the shoulder] — knock on wood,” said Crawford. “I don’t know if it’s a little bit more efficient for the timing and sequencing of my body and everything. Maybe my body’s a little bit more receptive of that and more efficient.
“But it’s just something that’s kind of happened and nobody said, ‘Hey, let’s try to lengthen you back out.’ ”
And why would they? After all, Crawford has developed a diverse mix of pitches that he uses to carve different areas of the strike zone in a way that is often an unsolved riddle for hitters.
Giolito can relate — to a point. He struggled early in his career, overhauled his mechanics after the 2018 season, and emerged as one of the best pitchers in baseball from 2019-21.
“It changed my career,” said Giolito. “The feedback from hitters is they’re not really seeing the ball until it’s coming out. It gets on you. He’s doing the same exact thing.
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“I’m envious of him because he’s able to cut the ball, which I’m not able to do. He’s got the sweeper and the cutter and then he’s got his split-change. The stuff is magnificent. And then just adding that little hitch in there to hide the ball, it’s super-effective.”
“Whatever he does with his arm stroke, it creates as late of action with pitches coming into the zone as any of our hitters see,” agreed Cash.
The combination of a unique delivery and terrific pitch shapes has led to spectacular results. Entering his start against the Brewers Friday, Crawford has a 2.17 ERA — eighth-best in the big leagues — while limiting hard contact.
Just 32 percent of the balls in play against him have been hit with an exit velocity of 95 m.p.h. or greater, the 10th-best mark among starters. And he’s allowed just 0.5 homers per nine innings, the seventh-lowest mark.
Given that success, Crawford isn’t about to retreat from what he does. But he’ll have to start accepting that his motion deserves a more formidable title than “this little chicken wing kind of thing.”
“ ‘The Raptor’ is definitely [more impressive] than that,” he acknowledged.
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.
