San Francisco Giants second baseman Joe Panik flips to shortstop Brandon Crawford to start a double play against the Kansas City Royals in the third inning in Game 7 of baseball’s World Series at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
Here’s a little preview of a piece I wrote for our Play Ball magazine, which will be sent to subscribers and available for single-copy sales in a few weeks. -AB
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – This is how you know you have a talented middle-infield combination:
Ask Brandon Crawford and Joe Panik about the most creative double play they’ve turned, and they don’t mention one from during an actual game. They don’t even pick their all-timer from Game 7 of the World Series, its graceful exchange and high degree of difficulty matched only by the moment’s vast importance.
“Joe, what was your favorite, most creative double play?” Crawford said.
“With you?” Panik said.
“Yeah,” Crawford said. “Hopefully it’s the same one that I’m…”
“Well,” said Panik, “you did one today during batting practice where…”
“It wasn’t today,” Crawford said. “I mean, today was good. It wasn’t the one I was thinking.”
“Yeah, today was a good one,” said Panik, turning to a reporter. “He caught it, tossed it between his legs, caught it with his bare hand and threw it.”
Crawford nodded. “Pretty much.”
“But the best one he does: catch it, between the legs, he’s coming toward second base — bounce pass,” Panik said.
“That’s a good one,” Crawford said. “It’s complicated. But that’s not the one I was thinking. My favorite one was in Colorado, when I did the…”
“Oh, OK. Yeah,” Panik said. “I know. Last ball in batting practice. It was up the middle and he just, he…”
Crawford nodded again. “Stuck out my foot.”
“Stuck out his foot and basically redirected it,” Panik said. “Like in hockey.”
“Like a chip shot,” Crawford said. “It went right to him. It was actually a good feed. I’m not kidding. And we’ll probably never, ever do that in a game.”
It was a practice double play that resulted in the trifecta: bench coach Ron Wotus throwing his hat to the ground, putting hands on his hips and then pinching his nose in disapproval. Crawford and Panik revel in those moments when they get all three reactions.
“Sometimes he’ll throw his fungo bat, too,” Crawford said.
Crawford and Panik both stress that they are serious about their work, only turning that final practice grounder or two into pieces of flair. They have a bit of fun at the end because they’re still kids playing a game, and kids like to test the limits of authority. But they’re also testing the realm of possibility. And when your territory spans the entire middle infield, there are times when a baseball is hit in a certain way that demands more than range, arm strength, surehandedness, trust and timing to spin one grounder into two outs.
Panache and creativity are important, too.
“What are you calling them? The six pillars?” said Crawford, shown a list of attributes found only in the finest double-play combinations. “Surehandedness isn’t a word. You made that up. And I’d say that timing and trust are the same thing.”
“Ah, Craw’ll just say creativity is the most important anyway,” Panik said.
However many pillars you count, the beauty of having Crawford and Panik in the Giants’ middle infield is that they score well across the board. Crawford is coming off his first season as a Gold Glove shortstop. Panik might have been the Gold Glove winner ahead of Miami second baseman Dee Gordon, or at least a finalist, if he hadn’t missed two months with a stress fracture in his lower back.
They might not play together for two decades, as Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker did in Detroit. It’s a different game nowadays. But it stands to reason that the Giants won’t have to worry about their middle infield for a long time.
Crawford just signed a six-year, $75 million contract. Panik will remain under club control for five seasons. It’s not a stretch to envision them becoming the first middle-infield combination to win NL Gold Gloves in the same season since the 2002 Cardinals with Fernando Vina and Edgar Renteria. Prior to that, you have to go back to 1974-77 when Joe Morgan and Davey Concepcion formed a Gold Glove tandem for the Big Red Machine.
“It is so weird that it’s been so long – especially in the NL, where it’s so important to be strong up the middle,” said former shortstop and current Detroit Tigers coach Omar Vizquel, who won the last two of his 11 Gold Gloves as a Giant in 2005-06. “I like the way they turn double plays. Crawford is unbelievable. In the last three years, he has improved in every aspect of the game.”
Count another former Giants shortstop among those who admire Crawford and Panik. Rich Aurilia, now serving as a special instructor with the club in spring training, agreed that the Giants’ middle-infield combo is as golden as it gets.
“We all know what Craw can do, and now he’s on a national level,” Aurilia said. “And Joe, I mean, in all reality, he probably would’ve won a Gold Glove if he played all last season, and don’t forget that he’s a shortstop who’s still learning second base.
“So it’s two young guys who are athletic, who have good range, they’re surehanded. I mean, every pillar you’ve got on there, they have it. And the way they play the game is fundamentally sound. They complement each other very well.
“Plus we all know the best athletes on the field are shortstops.”
What position did Aurilia play, again?
“Um, until I got too old?” he said, grinning. “Shortstop.”
So what attribute is the most important in forming a seamless double-play combination? Aurilia went with range, because “we had to know how far we could play from the bag and how quick we could get to the bag. The more range we had, the better we could be.”
Yet ask Aurilia to list his best double-play partner, and he bypasses Bret Boone – who had plenty of range for a second baseman – and picks Jeff Kent, instead. Was it because Kent played with more panache and creativity?
“C’mon, you watched Jeff play for a long time,” said Aurilia, leaning against a cinderblock hallway. “Jeff played with as much panache as this wall here. But he was very surehanded and we worked well together. We always knew where the other would be.”
That goes to teamwork and trust. Viquel has turned more double plays than any shortstop in major league history. He said when he tutors young Tigers infielders on the art, he stresses the importance of continuity. Even though your instincts are to be as quick as possible, it’s often worth taking than extra fraction of a second to make sure your feed is in the same place every time.
“That’s why I’d say timing and trust kind of go hand in hand,” Panik said. “Because when you have trust in one another, the timing’s going to be there. If you don’t have trust, you’re going to be a little more passive. It’s, `OK, if he’s inaccurate, I’ve got to be worried about catching the ball and securing it first instead of getting ready to throw.’”
Crawford said it doesn’t take long to become accustomed to a new double-play partner because the differences are subtle. He noted that former Giants second baseman Marco Scutaro liked double-play feeds to be led to his left side, maybe so he could come across the bag and clear himself a little better from onrushing baserunners.
Whether he is breaking in a new double-play partner or not, Crawford said he will spend the first weeks of spring training concentrating on his footwork. He’ll refresh his instincts in terms of positioning and angles. That way, the next time he goes deep to his right and has to make one of those blind, whirling throws to second base, it’ll be right on target.
Panik marvels at Crawford’s spatial awareness. Come to think of it, that could be the seventh pillar.
“It’s off the charts,” Panik said. “And as someone who came up as a shortstop, I appreciate what a gift that is. I’ll be honest with you, there hasn’t been one time he couldn’t get to a ball that I felt I would’ve gotten. Even last year when he was banged up.”
Vizquel doesn’t get to see enough NL baseball to make a definitive statement on the best double-play combo in the league. He admires his own guys in Detroit, Ian Kinsler and Jose Iglesias, and also mentioned the Rangers’ duo of Rougned Odor and Elvis Andrus.
But all-time, it probably doesn’t get better than those three seasons from 1999-2001 when Vizquel overlapped in Cleveland with Hall of Fame second baseman Roberto Alomar.
“What was so good about that combination is that we didn’t take ground balls together too much,” Vizquel said. “We hit in different groups. We did our work at different times. But all it took was a week or two in spring training. The creativity from both sides took over. He was so quick that basically whatever throw he gave me, we were going to turn the double play.
“And we killed a lot of rallies. When you turn two, you’re getting your pitcher out of a big inning. When you go to the playoffs and the World Series, to have a defense like that, you’ve got the game half won.”
And when you dive on your stomach, smother a grounder up the middle, creatively flip with your glove as Panik did, and start one of the most important double plays in World Series history?
Well, you can add this to the Ron Wotus trifecta: enthusiastic applause.
