Episode 0 The Clone Wars : Multiplicity of SPEED!

There is a lot of talk about speed this year, it’s a category you can wait on, and wait on and wait on. Although Carl Crawford had an off year two years ago, he bounced back to be, well, Carl Crawford. So why has Carl Crawford been slipping a bit on the radars of pundits, gurus, websites, blogs, articles, draft guides and the collective consciousness of the entire fantasy world. Once upon a time, Crawford was a universal 'value pick' at the end of the first round, and he definitely returned back to form doing the ‘Carl Crawford thing' last year. So why on earth would Carl Crawford be falling in draft positions? After all. Carl Crawford is almost a fully fleshed out proto-type, android like base stealing machine. He is the Alpha Male of base stealing, the Captain Crook of MLB.




I don’t know if Dr. Wiley, has stolen a sample of his DNA but there seem to be a lot of Carl Crawford ‘clones’ running around the majors these days. It reminds me a bit of the movie Multiplicity with Micheal Keaton, where they clone his character and each copy becomes much dumber.




There are a whole list of guys, much more recent additions to the majors, that do the “Carl Crawford thing” but they don’t do nearly as well. Today we have Michael Bourn, Jacoby Ellsbury, Nyger Morgan, Andrew McCutchen, Brent Gardener, Emilio Bonifocio, Julio Burbon, Rajai Davis, Elvis Andrus, Dexter Fowler, Alicidies Escobar and Scott Podsednick seems like he’ as old as Mum-Ra but is 33 years of age and can still probably steal some bags.



Probably none of these guys are going to do what Carl Crawford does, and in many ways each and every one of them is a china town version of dodgy craftsmanship.



If Crawford slips to the middle of the second round and you have a flexible draft strategy, by all means grab him. Unless of course your draft strategy unless of course your hell bent on power like a Burmese dictator.







Lets say you were able to get your hands on a Zack Greinke with the 20th overall pick and you needed to pass on Mr. Crawford, don’t worry you can get a cheaper version much later. It's quite alright. There’s plenty of them out there. Now, earlier I listed a whole mess of them earlier.



So which ones are worth taking a draft pick on ?



Michael Borne – Michael Borne could be the fastest man in baseball and he’s prone to possibly steal a hell of a lot. He batted an eviscerating .229 the year before last and is probably about as healthy for your team as E-coli. People know he could bat in the .270 range and every one was left with a nasty case of the “WHAT IFs?!”. WHAT IF he were to bat like .280, how many bases would be steal then. If you to have used yahoos computerized player ranker at certain paints in the season to look at the status of agent Borne, it would have told you we was one of the TOP 25 valuable player in fantasy, period. That big onerous cloud still follows him around though, considering he’s only one season removed from a .229 batting average, so proceed with caution, then again drafters might have that very thing on their minds, making him slip down about a full round past his fair market value.



Andrew McCutchen – Fret not that McCutchen has not hit more than 14 home runs in a full minor league season, if your looking for a baby stat line that looks just like the well establish Crawford. McCutchen’s batting average in the minors is a solid .286 which matches the .286 he hit during his major league test drive. He young, 23 young, and going to have a break out season any way now, and for now a nice ceiling for him is .285 18 HR / 35 SB. Baby Crawford indeed.



Rajai Davis – Journeyman Davis got his shot last year and shattered any conservative expectations for him. He stole over 30 bases in a fraction of a season and hit a solid .300 for a good part of the second half of the year. Will he hit three hundred ? Probably not, but it wont be too far, and since a full extrapolation to say 70 bases would be wide eyed and irresponsible, ill make a more conservative call at 45.



Of course with all this talk about cloning and deteriorating quality with each carbon copy, your best bet is to try to snag some value in the real McCoy.