San Francisco Giants’ X-Factor Heading into October

As the San Francisco Giants head into their Wild Card game on Wednesday with the Pittsburgh Pirates, much of the focus will be on Buster Posey, Hunter Pence and Madison Bumgarner. The focus should be on those guys. They are the superstars on the Giants. But another player is going to be the X-Factor for San Francisco in October.

Brandon Crawford enjoyed a breakout year offensively this season. While his .246 average dipped ever so slightly from the .248 he posted the last two seasons, the Giants’ shortstop posted some other fantastic numbers. He tallied career highs in games played, home runs, runs batted in, runs scored, triples, walks, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and stolen bases.

The 27 year-old Crawford finished the 2014 regular season with 69 RBI’s, good for fourth on the team. He finished behind the usual suspects, as Posey, Pence, and Pablo Sandoval were the only players to tally more RBI’s. But Crawford’s total becomes a little more impressive when the numbers are broken down a little more.

Crawford drove in his 69 runs in 564 plate appearances. Pence racked up 74 RBI’s in 708 plate appearances, and the Panda totaled 73 RBI’s in his 638 appearances at the dish.

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Crawford had 144 fewer plate appearances than Pence and 74 less than Sandoval. Crawford drove in a run every 8.17 times he took his hacks. At that rate, if he had as many opportunities at the plate as Pence, he would have driven in 17 more runs, totaling 86. Following the same formula, if Crawford were given the same amount of plate appearances as Sandoval, he would have tallied nine extra RBI’s, giving him 78.

It should be noted that Pence spent a lot of his season hitting either leadoff or second in the lineup, where he does not have as many RBI opportunities as a hitter later in the lineup.

One area that Crawford did seem to regress was in his defense. Another career high he earned in 2014 was 21 committed errors. That total was second among all shortstops, and fourth among all players.

Down the stretch, Crawford really stepped things up behind his pitchers. He committed just one error in 23 September games, and seemed to make a tremendous play just about every day.

Crawford also has a chip on his shoulder. When the Giants made their run to a World Series ring in 2012, Crawford batted just .217 in 16 games. He had seven RBI’s, five of which came in the NLCS against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Giants’ fans have seen Crawford get it done in the regular season. Crawford wants to prove that he can get it done under the bright lights of postseason baseball. And having to go through a one-game playoff may be the perfect stage for Crawford to make a name for himself.