Harrison Crawford took it out of the park twice on Saturday (Spomer/WBR) CLICK TO BUY
Harrison Crawford busted out of a season-long slump in big way on Saturday afternoon. The senior third baseman from Oxnard, California hit a pair of mammoth home runs, a solo shot and a two-run shot, as part of a three-hit day to lead the Creighton Bluejays to a 4-0 win over the Jacksonville Dolphins in game two of a three-game series at TD Ameritrade Park Omaha.
Crawford, who entered the day with a .203 batting average and just two runs batted in on the season, said that his most important at-bat of the game might have actually come before the ones where he left the yard. In his first trip to the plate in the bottom of the second inning, he singled back up the middle on a 2-1 pitch, something he says he hasn’t done in a long time.
“Today the game plan was to get a good fastball and hit a line drive with it,” Crawford said. “The first at-bat was the thing that really got me going with that base hit up the middle. That set the tone for me being able to stay flat.”
“Yesterday I had a good talk with Coach and the main thing is not to try to do too much. When you start getting into a rut you just want to hit a five-run home run, but it’s impossible. The first at-bat of the game was the biggest thing for me. Having that base hit up the middle, I haven’t done that in a long time, so after being able to do that I know it will start coming.”
Jacksonville starting pitcher Nathan Disch appeared to pick up early on where the Dolphins staff left off last night. That was until Crawford, with two outs in the bottom of the fourth inning, smashed a first pitch solo home run out to left field over the bullpen, the bleachers, and the Pedestrian Bridge to give the Bluejays a 1-0 lead. Crawford knew it right away and so did left fielder Michael Babb, who took one step to his left, stopped, and just watched to see where the ball would land.
“It was probably the best hit ball I’ve ever hit, to be honest,” Crawford said. “There was no feeling in the ball. It was absolutely pure. As pure as it gets.”
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Senior second baseman Ryan Fitzgerald added a sacrifice fly with the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh inning to make it 2-0. Then, Crawford teed off on a 3-1 fastball from Jacksonville reliever Jeff Tanner with one on and two out in the bottom of the eighth to extend the lead to 4-0 and cap off a big day at the plate with the wind blowing out at a ball park that normally eats deep fly balls for breakfast.
“We knew the ball park was going to play a little smaller today, especially in the corners,” Creighton head coach Ed Servais said. “Harrison has a lot of ability, it just hasn’t come together for him. I give him a lot of credit, because he’s really defended well. Sometimes when you’re not hitting you let your defense slide, but he’s hung in there, he’s defended well.”
“He had a well-hit ball on Tuesday and he’s swinging much more aggressively, and he’s going to run into a couple balls every now and then. We need him to put the ball in play a little more often; his strikeout total is kind of going through the roof right now, but hopefully this day can get him going. He had more RBI today than he had all season. That’s kind of how crazy baseball has been this year for this team. It really doesn’t make any sense what’s going on; our high RBI guy has 13 and we’re 23 games in.”
Jeff Albrecht pitched a strong 6 1/3 innings in the shutout on Saturday (Spomer/WBR) CLICK TO BUY
On the mound, Crawford’s solo home run in the fourth inning was all the run support that junior left-hander Jeff Albrecht needed to work with on the afternoon. In his second start of the season, the Creighton Prep product blanked the Dolphins over his six and 1/3 innings, which tied a career-best. He scattered a pair of singles and three walks, while striking out three hitters, and needed just 82 pitches to record his 19 outs.
“I think getting ahead of hitters with strike one was really effective,” Albrecht said. “That’s one of the goals we have as a staff is 70% first strikes to hitters. That really sets up at-bats in the pitcher’s favor every time, so I was really focusing on that, and then just trying to change looks, change eye levels, and change speeds.”
Albrecht improved to 3-0 on the season and lowered his earned run average to 1.16 on the season. He has already registered 18 strikeouts to just six walks in 23.2 innings of work in 2016 after walking 22 batters and striking out only 17 over 29.1 innings last season.
“Just having more belief in myself is a huge thing, and confidence comes from believing in myself, then going out there and performing and building off of each pitch and each outing,” Albrecht said. “I feel different definitely. I worked hard this off-season to tighten some things up both mechanically and mentally, and now I just go out there like last year didn’t happen.”
“I think that’s the case especially for a lot of young players. They focus on results, and if they’re going bad it’s a lot easier for it to snowball, and if it’s going well it’s a lot easier to carry that momentum. What separates really good players from players that let that happen is just moving on, and being able to focus on what’s ahead instead of what just happened in the past.”
For his part, Ed Servais says Albrecht’s improvement have little to do with any coaching adjustments and more to do with a young player who came into fall camp determined to leave the poor performances from last season and summer ball in the rear view mirror. Once he showed the coaches he had successfully done that it was all about waiting for the opportunity and taking advantage of it once it came along.
“He deserves a lot of credit,” Servais said. “He’s worked really hard. He does a lot of dry work in between starts. He’s gotten himself in better shape. He didn’t like what happened last year and he had a rough summer, and then came in in the fall and looked more like he did when he was a freshman. We didn’t give him a lot of innings early, but because of some of the injury issues — with Matt being injured right now — we had to plug another guy in there, and Jeff has really taken advantage of that.”
“I’d like to tell you we did all of this magical stuff with him, but the credit goes to him — 98% of the time the credit goes to the players. When they figure stuff out, when they make a nice jump, when they go in there and fill a slot like Jeff is the credit goes to those guys. Way too much is given to coaches and not enough is given to the players. He deserves all the credit. I talked about it last night after the loss, how much Jeff has been engaged when he’s not pitching. He’s very engaged in the game. Sometimes pitchers don’t do that, and I think that’s another reason why he’s having success. He just feels better about where he’s at right now. I’d like to tell you we had a nice meeting with him and he started to turn a corner right after that, but he deserves the credit.”
With the three-game series now even at one game apiece, the Bluejays (17-6) will send sophomore right-hander Keith Rogalla (2-1, 4.87) to the mound for Sunday’s rubber match. Jacksonville (17-9) will counter with a sophomore right-hander of their own in Spencer Stockton (3-1, 3.58). First pitch at TD Ameritrade Park is scheduled for 12:00 p.m. (CST).