SAN FRANCISCO — Once viewed as a two-way project hampered by his lack of health, Reggie Crawford is all of a sudden one step away from the major leagues.
Crawford, 22, was promoted to Triple-A Sacramento this week and, according to Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ 2022 first-round draft pick could be pitching out of the big-league bullpen by the end of the season.
Standing 6-foot-4 and 235 pounds, Crawford throws a fastball that reaches the upper 90s from the left side that overpowered Double-A hitters to the tune of 19 strikeouts in 9⅔ innings. Making his first appearance for Sacramento on Wednesday, Crawford walked a batter and hit another but otherwise recorded a scoreless inning on 12 pitches.
“Not to trivialize the competition, but he can just throw his fastball by guys in Double-A,” Zaidi said of the decision to promote Crawford to the highest level of the minor leagues despite only 28⅔ professional innings. “It didn’t seem to be the best learning environment for him to throw his best offspeed pitches and learn some of the nuances of pitching that we wanted to see if he just reared back and threw 99 past them. Triple-A will be more of a test for him.”
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Once he refines his selection of secondary pitches, the Giants believe Crawford has the chops to be a starting pitcher. But as they try to balance the workload on his developing arm and the potential impact he could have on the big-league team, the plan is to continue to work him in shorter bursts — two innings at a time, separated by four days of rest, initially.
In 21 career appearances, Crawford has never pitched more than two innings at a time.
“He’s only got so many innings this year, realistically,” Zaidi said. “Even though long-term we still think of him with starter potential I think it’s possible he pitches for us here this year at the big league level. For him to be able to do that, we need him to be able to come back and forget about a back-to-back, even just one day rest, he’s never done those things. Rather than stretch him out, I think our schedule and our plan is more to get him pitching in more typical intervals for a reliever and see if he can handle that.”
