Justin Crawford Proved He Doesn’t Need Hard Contact to Make an Impact with Two-Hit Debut

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Phillies prospect as revered as Justin Crawford, and it’s been longer since we’ve seen a Phillies prospect whose debut lived up to the hype. Crawford tagged two singles in his first two at-bats against a veteran arm in Nathan Eovaldi, with one of them sparking an inning in which the Phillies scored three.

Crawford debuted at baseball’s top level on Thursday and made an immediate impact on the lineup with his rare hitter’s profile. On the first Major League pitch he saw, Crawford jumped on Eovaldi’s 94 MPH fastball and sent a line drive up the middle for his first hit in The Show.

“I wasn’t trying to wait around,” Crawford said postgame. “Just trying to put a good swing on something, and thankfully I was able to, and able to find a hole.”

Welcome to the show No. 2!#Phillies pic.twitter.com/XoM771pvlH

— Philly Sports Reports (@PhlySprtsReprts) March 26, 2026

His first knock was 80 MPH off the bat and had an expected batting average (xBA) of .370 — a typical result of his at-bats. His next hit was a lead-off single up the middle; this time, 85 MPH off the bat with an xBA of .390.

Two hits, both with less than a 40% chance of actually being a hit. Crawford knows his approach; he knows that by putting the ball in play, he’s going to make something happen, and that’s the type of hitter the Phillies needed. He’s the youngest Phillie outfielder with a multi-hit game since Mike Anderson in 1973.

“His at-bats have been great throughout the Spring,” Kyle Schwarber said. “He’s such a raw player, there’s going to be so much room for growth. The guy hits, I think that’s kind of the biggest takeaway, is he just finds a way to get hits, and he’s a big problem on the basepath.”

Following his lead-off single in the fifth, the lineup turned over, and Turner knocked a single of his own into right field. A few strikeouts later, Alec Bohm brought them both in with a three-run blast. It’s the kind of sequence, barring the consecutive strikeouts from Schwarber and Bryce Harper, that Phillies management envisioned with Crawford in the 9-hole.

The ironic part about Crawford’s two hits? Neither were hit well nor hard, and that’s been the concern surrounding him since he moved up to Double-A ball. The statheads refer to his groundball rate and batting average on balls in play (BABIP), which both exceed normal levels, as a flaw in his game.

But take these concerns with a grain of salt because BABIP is overvalued as a sabermetric. The baseball world views it as the end-all, be-all for contact hitters, such as Crawford or Trea Turner, who both have high BABIP. The concern is that these players will naturally regress over time because they’re simply getting “lucky”, but for a player like Crawford, there’s more to it than that.

Crawford posted a .407 BABIP last season in Lehigh Valley, and it never sank below .350 after he was moved to Double-A. Those numbers translated to a .322 batting average and an .831 OPS throughout the minors, and a Triple-A batting title in 2025 with a .334 batting average.

To pair with his apparent “luck” on balls in play, Crawford swung at 50% of the pitches he saw last season and made contact on 82.7% of those swings. The only Phillie in the realm of these numbers is Bryson Stott, who, for comparison, swung at 40% of pitches, making contact with the ball on 86% of those swings.

The rookie is a contact-hitting, groundball-heavy, free-swinger with 75-grade speed — it just makes sense. Any youth baseball coach will tell you good things happen when you put the ball in play, and that’s been the case for Crawford on every level of professional baseball.

It was a “great, great start,” as Phillies manager Rob Thomson said, for the rookie. “Had a couple hits, and they paid attention to him on the bases. So even if he doesn’t get a stolen base, he creates some havoc just that way.”

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