Agreed on Crawford. There was actually a lot of research suggesting that a player with his skill set is actually able to weather decline better than players with a more narrow skill set/specialty.
The only beef I think folks had at the time was that it was strange to pay a premium defense left fielder to play half his games at Fenway.
Other than that... it was widely agreed that Crawford was a great signing.
Not true. It was widely agreed that the Gonzalez trade was great. But there was a significant amount of concern about Crawford.
First and foremost were the concerns about his relatively low BB-rate and how his HR power would be sapped by Fenway’s RF.
Of secondary concern was whether it made sense to put a plus defensive LF in front of the monster knowing that his arm precluded a switch to RF.
Third, it was clear that there wasn’t a top-of-the-lineup slot available, so his bat wasn’t going to play anywhere except where he’d have to redefine himself as a hitter. Plus, his struggles against LHP caused questions about whether he’d need to be platooned, despite his $20MM AAV.
However, these concerns were pretty much drowned out by the prospect of obtaining some prime years of a dynamic player who had tortured Wakefield and the rest of the pitching staff for ages.
So the consensus view emerged that although $20MM was a lot of money, and that he duplicated the skill set of another player already on payroll, and potentially that of a top prospect, it was totally worth it to stack the team with such a great player.
Note that the first and third concerns were pretty much exactly the same concerns raised about Panda, as was the consensus view that emerged.
The nice part today is that, despite the obvious long-term performance risk of a JDM signing, none of these other concerns apply. So signing JDM is a risk that most likely should be taken, even if it doesn’t work out perfectly to plan.
[edit]: ninja’d by JMOH!
