How veteran shortstop Brandon Crawford has adjusted to a bench role: Cardinals Extra (2024)

MIAMI — A former four-time Gold Glove winner who has earned three All-Star selections, a Silver Slugger Award and won a pair of World Series, Brandon Crawford signed with the Cardinals during spring training after 14 seasons in the majors with the San Francisco Giants and with more than 1,500 starts at shortstop in the big leagues under his belt.

There was one thing that wealth of major league experience didn’t provide Crawford: He’d never had to figure out how to stay ready as a backup. The Cardinals signed him as insurance and depth behind dynamic rookie shortstop Masyn Winn.

How big of an adjustment has it been for the veteran?

“A huge adjustment, to be honest, but I knew what it was going to be like coming in,” Crawford said in the visiting clubhouse at LoanDepot Park on Monday. “I knew I wasn’t going to be getting regular play.

“I’m just trying to stay ready as best I can on the days that I’m not in there. Taking pregame, whether it’s ground balls or (batting practice), just a little bit more focused — game-like a little bit — so that I can kind of carry that same rhythm, timing, mentality, into the game.”

Crawford, 37, signed on Feb. 27. Full-squad workouts had been underway for more than a week and multiple exhibition games had been played by the time he had a locker in the team’s spring training facility. He didn’t appear in an exhibition game until March 9, and then he sat out more than a week after he got hit by a pitch on the hand on March 17.

“We can’t forget, he didn’t have a spring either,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said of Crawford. “That’s a big part of what we saw early on compared to what we’re seeing now.

“It’s a combination of him getting enough work in where he feels like his legs are under him and his timing is there but also switching his routine where he can stay ready because he’s never had to do what we’re asking him to do.”

After a late start and an interrupted spring training, Crawford scuffled at the plate in his limited playing time in the first month of the regular season. He finished April with a slash line of .105/.191/.105, with two hits in 21 plate appearances.

Crawford, who doubled and scored in Sunday’s 2-1 win over the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, has seen his bat come to life in recent weeks while still playing in a limited role.

He left Sunday’s game in the eighth inning because of leg cramping, but he said he felt “normal” on Monday and took ground balls, made throws across the diamond and hit batting practice before the game — in which he did not start.

In 22 plate appearances since the beginning of May, he has slashed .263/.364/.526.

“April was still kind of my spring training,” Crawford said. “Unfortunately, nobody else can kind of look at it like that, but that’s kind of how I’m trying to look at it and kind of just not even think about those numbers. The numbers since May are pretty good. And I’ve felt a lot better too.”

At first, he might have treated his days off similarly to how he’d treated them when he was an everyday player, more relaxed and with low intensity. He said he couldn’t pinpoint an instance when it “clicked” and his mentality changed, but at this point, it certainly has changed.

He’s become more familiar with what he needs in order to be ready without regular playing time. That includes taking more swings off the pitching machine than he probably ever had previously in his career.

He has also taken advantage of the club’s pitching machine that simulates specific pitchers — including the spin, movement and velocity — when they’re at Busch Stadium.

In April, Crawford was trying to fine-tune his swing and make an adjustment to help him find consistency. He never quite felt “right” with his swing for that entire month.

Crawford has settled into something he feels is “a lot closer” to the swing he wants to take every day, and the Crawford as a part-time player experiment the Cardinals rolled the dice on has looked a lot better in May and June than it did in April.

Asked about his certainty that Crawford would successfully adjust to the new role, Marmol said, “You never know, but when you explain the role and they’re accepting of that role — I mean, the guy has been in the league for a while and knew that we had an everyday guy, and he was coming in to do what he’s doing.”

“Knowing that and him accepting to come here lets you know that he’s capable of doing it.”

Gallegos comes to Miami

Right-handed relief pitcher Giovanny Gallegos joined the Cardinals in Miami on Monday, though he was not activated from the injured list. He was slated to throw a bullpen session in front of the Cardinals’ major league pitching coaches before they determined his next step.

Gallegos has been on the IL since May 6 because of a right shoulder impingement. He began a minor league rehab assignment with Triple-A Memphis on May 31. His rehab assignment shifted to Double-A Springfield (Missouri) on June 11.

Gallegos has made six appearances since he started his assignment. The most recent came on Friday. He allowed three runs on three hits and two balks in one inning for Springfield.

Lights, camera, action

Cardinals rookie shortstop Winn did a sit-down interview with “CBS Evening News” reporter and chief White House correspondent Major Garrett, a University of Missouri graduate, on the field before Monday’s game.

The interview comes in advance of Thursday’s game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, the oldest ballpark in the United States and the former home of the Birmingham Black Baron of the Negro Leagues. The interview is slated to air on Wednesday in conjunction with the Juneteenth national holiday.