A lot of the big names that came to new teams this offseason didn’t get off to great starts with their new teams. Adam Dunn and Jayson Werth have been awful all year for the White Sox and Nationals respectively. But there are a pair of hitters that have caught onto nice hot streaks since the All-Star Break, and are now starting to look like the players for whom their teams paid out big money. I’m talking, of course, about Carl Crawford and Dan Uggla.
We’ll begin with Crawford. His first half in Boston was terrible. In the first year of a seven year, $142 million contract and making $14 million in 2011, the former Rays star looked like a shell of himself. His OPS was only .659, and the fleet footed Crawford only stole eight bases, while being caught four times. Injuries played a part as well, with Crawford going on the DL in the middle of June and not coming off until the All-Star Break ended. 2010 was Crawford’s finest season as a Ray, OPSing .851 while 47 bases in 57 tries. That was the player that the Red Sox envisioned acquiring, not the slug who was costing the team games with his bat.
But since the break, Crawford has been a better player. His OPS in July and August is .803, and he has stolen five bases on six attempts thusfar. It may not be the superstar performance that the Red Sox were expecting, but it is still a vast improvement over his dire first half. Crawford has been even better when you take out the July stats and just look at his August so far: his line is .429/.448/.679, and he’s got five extra base hits in seven games. A healthy, productive Crawford added to Boston’s already stacked lineup of Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Kevin Youkilis makes them that much more fearsome as we enter the season’s home stretch.
Another player that has caught fire since the break is Uggla of the Braves. Uggla was quite possibly the worst player in baseball during the season’s first half, in the first year of a five year, $62 million contract. His OPS of .621 was pathetic and his 84 strikeouts in 324 at bats was ugly. But there was a positive to his first half, as he was tied for the team lead in homers with 15.
Uggla has looked like a completely different player since the break. He has a 1.070 OPS, which is third in the NL. His nine homers lead the National League along with Albert Pujols (remember him?), and his 22 RBI are tied for second. There’s also the elephant in the room of his 29-game hitting streak, one shy of the longest in the majors this year and the second longest in Atlanta Braves history (fourth longest in franchise history) behind Rico Cartys’ 31-gamer in 1970. With Brian McCann’s strained oblique, Jason Heyward’s inexplicable loss of playing time, and Martin Prado turning into a pumpkin, the Braves probably wouldn’t be a playoff team if Uggla wasn’t hitting the way he is right now.
The second half resurgences of both of these players have helped their teams immensely. The Red Sox could skirt by this season if Crawford continued to struggle, due to just how damn good their offense is. But if Uggla continued to struggle, Atlanta would be knee deep in trouble due to just how bad their offense has been this season when you factor all the injuries and ineffectiveness into play.
