SAN DIEGO — Giants players spent the last week celebrating their four All-Stars, freely handing out compliments about Buster Posey, Madison Bumgarner, Johnny Cueto and Brandon Belt. But nearly every conversation featured the same bump in the road: What about Brandon Crawford?
“It sucks not to see Craw go in,” Belt said a week ago. “He’s as deserving as anybody else that made the team.”
Even just hours before first pitch of the All-Star Game at Petco Park, the decision to leave the Giants shortstop (and others) off the team still swishes around the head of manager Terry Collins.
“It’s really hard. I left a lot of great players off the team,” Collins said. “…Brandon Crawford’s a great player who deserves to be here.
“There’s a couple other guys I can say that about too.”
The roster squeeze included Dodgers rookie shortstop Corey Seager making the team over Crawford, and infielder Aledmys Diaz joining the roster to replace Cardinal teammate Matt Carpenter. The manager’s All-Star selection process is as difficult as any job in baseball. Bruce Bochy’s done it three times already, and there are negative repercussions with every selection.
In other years it’s been other players omitted from the team. This year it was Crawford, in a four-month stretch widely agreed as “All-Star worthy.”
“It’s no fun,” Collins said. “Even though the names in front of you are great, the process is grueling.”
Crawford leads the Giants and all NL shortstops with 61 RBIs, and is heavily lauded for his defensive wizardry. At 29 years old, he’s primed to be in the All-Star conversation for a few years to come. But the 2016 conversation is officially over.
