We have taken Brandon Crawford’s defense for granted

“McDeep Dive” is our new series that spotlights one Giants player every day for a week. We’ll move backwards and forwards through time, look at on the field stuff, off the field stuff, and see if we can learn something new about them. Here’s part five of our look at Brandon Crawford.

It’s fair to say that the Giants wouldn’t have gone on the run that they did without the glove of Brandon Crawford solidifying their defense up the middle. The cruel Hell-god that is Baseball, of course, decided that today would not be the day where he would bail out his teammates one more time.

Still, after a weekend of spectacular plays —

— Kelby Tomlinson doesn’t make either of these plays and very few around the league would go 1-for-2 let alone 2-for-2 —

it all came down to this:

But the only reason why it felt as disappointing as it did — the Giants were sure to lose that game anyway, and the general feeling all season long has been that the Giants aren’t that great even when they win — was because it happened to Crawford. We just expect him to make the tough plays.

We just did a post about how he makes it all look so effortless and in the previous part of this McDeep Dive we learned that the trick to making it look effortless is to work extremely hard to get better on the field. The work ethic predates his pro career, but because of that strong foundation, he gained enough confidence to just... start messing around...

He experiments, improvises, and gets after it with a fearlessness few fielders possess.

If you’re like me, then you must’ve found it an odd coincidence that one of the infield drills featured a ball hit off home plate much like the one Olson hit today. In that non-pressure drill, Crawford used his bare hand to grab the ball and fire it to first. Can you imagine if he had done that today? We would’ve lost our minds.

As it stands, we just have to accept that Crawford makes us lose our minds only a couple of times a week instead. He’s won the last three Gold Glove Awards at shortstop and as much as Dave Kaval and the A’s want today to have ruined his career and the lives of every Giants fan, he’ll win it again this year.

Maybe a Gold Glove doesn’t mean too much to some of you (given that it’s mostly an award for offense for some reason), but it’s a distinction awarded by the league that far exceeds the appreciation we show him at every home game. Brandon Crawford does not get enough credit.