The One Thing You Can Never Say I Am Is Wrong: A Look At Evan Crawford

With the baseball (regular) season wrapping up I want to look back at one of my predictions from earlier in the year. It was my belief that Freshmen Evan Crawford was going to be something special at Second Base. Now, I had never seen him play, but from looking at his High School stats and reading interviews with, and about him it really sounded like #7 was going to give Hoosier fans plenty to cheer about this year.

So let's take a look at how Evan is doing leading into the Big Ten Tourney:

AVG: .333 Runs: 30 Hits: 61 2b: 13 3b: 1 HR: 1 RBI: 30 SB: 18 OPS: .810

Now let's look at the stats of the other starting eight averaged out:

AVG: .278 Runs: 21 Hits: 40 2b: 6 3b: .75 HR: .6 RBI: 17.6 SB: 7.8 OPS: .672 (yes, really)

So basically Evan Crawford is hitting 55 points better than the "average" Hoosier starter, scoring 9 more runs, hitting 21 more hits, numbering 7 more doubles, 12 more RBI, 10 more steals and a significantly higher Onbase+Slugging average.

In terms of his rank on the team in each category:

AVG: 2nd Runs: 2nd Hits: 2nd 2b: 1st 3b: 3rd HR: T-2nd RBI: T-2nd SB: 2nd OPS: 2nd

Across the board Crawford stands out as one of IU's best offensive players this year. In fact he is 2nd to or tied with IU (probable) MVP Sophomore Andrew Means in pretty much every category. Doing all that with the bat while playing second base as a first year college player is something pretty impressive.

Way to go Evan, you deserve something special.



Evan Crawford - Adam Ahlfeld Team Player Award recipient.