Reflecting on the long and successful career of SF Giants legend Brandon Crawford

Brandon Crawford is a name that has been deeply etched into the SF Giants’ history books. Whether it was his twelve consecutive Opening Day starts at shortstop, his four Gold Gloves, his three All-Star game selections, or his two World Series rings, Crawford made a name for himself as the greatest shortstop in the franchise’s 141-year history.

Reflecting on the long and successful career of SF Giants legend Brandon Crawford

For someone who grew up a Giants fan from back in the Candlestick days, Crawford’s fantastic career in San Francisco must have been a dream come true, and it was a dream that we all as fans were honored to watch unfold.

Crawford’s first career hit was a grand slam against the Milwaukee Brewers on May 27th, 2011, a sign of the great success that lay in store for him. He was just the sixth player to ever hit a grand slam in his first career game, following in the footsteps of Bobby Bonds. His debut came just two days after the crushing injury Buster Posey received to his leg in a collision at home plate.

Possibly the main highlight of Crawford’s career, however, was a different grand slam. On October 1st, 2014, Crawford helped lift the Giants over the Pirates in the NL Wild Card game by smashing a 1-2 curveball out of Edison Volquez’s hand over the right field fence. It was the first grand slam ever hit by a shortstop in a postseason game. The Giants, of course, went on to win their third World Series in five years after advancing past that fateful game.

While most of the incredible memories we have of Crawford came from the defensive end, where he dazzled us all with countless slick catches and laser-beam throws to first, he set quite a few records – both Giants and MLB records – at the plate, too. He tied the MLB record and set a new franchise record when he tallied a seven-hit game against the Marlins on April 8th, 2016. He also became the first shortstop in history to record five hits and eight RBI in a single game when he did so against the Rockies on July 15th, 2019, which was the first time any Giant had accomplished the feat since Willie Mays back in 1961.

Crawford made his 1,326th appearance as a shortstop on June 8th, 2021 against the Rangers during the best season of his career, passing Hall of Famer Travis Jackson for the most ever among Giants shortstops according to the Elias Sports Bureau. He also hit two home runs in that game for his fifth career multi-HR game and finished the year with a .298/.373/.522 slash line (140 wRC+), career-highs in homers (24) and WAR (6.2), and the fourth Gold Glove of his career.

When his latest two-year, $32 million contract extension came to a close in the 2023 offseason, he made the difficult decision to leave the only home he’d ever known for St. Louis, who released him on Tuesday.

Rather than retiring as a Giant, his primary goal was to play “another season making baseball memories for his four oldest children, ages 5 to 11, all of whom had cajoled him into postponing retirement” according to Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic. The Giants, who at the time were prepared to give Marco Luciano the lion’s share of at-bats at shortstop, were finally ready to move on.

Now that Tyler Fitzgerald has cemented himself as the new shortstop of the future and Crawford has struggled for the second consecutive year, a reunion is probably not in the cards right now. If he doesn’t play another game for the Giants, he will finish his Giants career with 1,654 games played – all as a shortstop – seventh-most in Giants history and the most among their shortstops.

The ideal situation for many Giants fans would be to see him in a Giants uniform for one last swan song, like what the Giants gave Pablo Sandoval as a kind of ceremonial goodbye. It remains to be seen whether or not the Giants would be interested in something like this, but it would be good closure for both sides to bring an end to what was a remarkable – and historical – partnership.