The acquisition of Brandon Crawford by the St. Louis Cardinals is simultaneously the funniest possible transaction and a completely defensible one. Acquiring a thirty-seven year-old, a fifth acquisition this off-season of a player who was born in the 1980s, is a deeply funny way of leaning into their own bit, and bringing in a guy who has taken 6,238 plate appearances with the San Francisco Giants and zero with anybody else is an extraordinary effort to steal valor from another franchise. The Cardinals essentially acquired another equivalent of Matt Carpenter, but for another franchise–a no-doubt franchise Hall of Famer who will absolutely not make it to Cooperstown but will be cherished by his long-time fans.

But there is also a perfectly reasonable case for signing Brandon Crawford, a shortstop whose terms have not yet been announced but which is surely a short contract. In theory, this is a contract that poses little risk because, as it stands right now, the St. Louis Cardinals have a need for depth at the shortstop position. As it stands right now, the team’s slotted everyday shortstop is Masyn Winn, an exciting prospect but one who was extremely underwhelming at the plate last season in his 137 MLB plate appearances–while Crawford will almost certainly not win the starting job in Spring Training, the ZiPS projection system forecasts him to be a superior hitter in 2024. The safer shortstop option would be Tommy Edman, currently listed as the team’s backup at the position, but his expected role in center field and his prolonged recovery from a right wrist injury which could sideline him through Opening Day makes him a double-question mark at the position. Next on the list is José Fermín, who has never played an inning of shortstop in the Major Leagues and whom those who wisely checked out early on the Cardinals last season may not even remember played in 21 games. And fourth is Brendan Donovan, who is currently listed as a starter at two positions.

The current level of quality of Brandon Crawford is a bit of a mystery. In 2021, Brandon Crawford finished fourth in National League MVP voting, garnering four first-place votes and serving as the pivotal force of a 107-win San Francisco Giants team. He experienced back-to-back material drop-offs in 2022 and 2023, however, and was outright unplayable in 2023, with a .587 OPS and shaky defense. The obvious strategy for projection is to assume that Brandon Crawford will neither be an MVP candidate nor extraordinarily awful, but the nature of what the Cardinals are expecting from him assures that despite Crawford’s statistical volatility, it probably won’t have that material of a negative impact on them.

This is how it works in theory: either Brandon Crawford is somewhere between decent and exceptional (with the former being far more likely) and the Cardinals keep the veteran around for the year, or he absolutely stinks and when Tommy Edman has returned and is fully functional and capable of spotting Masyn Winn at shortstop from time to time, the Cardinals designate Crawford for assignment, take a minimal financial loss, and move on. Brandon Crawford probably isn’t too much worse than José Fermín, but even if he is, the amount of playing time either would receive early in a season with a refreshed roster should be minimal.

But the problem is that Brandon Crawford, by virtue of being a veteran who will eventually appear on a Hall of Fame ballot, has the veneer of being reliable, when by virtue of being a 37 year-old at a position where even Cal Ripken Jr. couldn’t remain past thirty-six, he is almost certainly not truly reliable. And Brandon Crawford could be far from the first infielder entering his age-37 season to test the stomach of his manager.

Although Mark Ellis was not an Oakland Athletics lifer when the St. Louis Cardinals signed him in late 2013 as middle infield depth, there were parallels with Brandon Crawford. Both spent long stretches in Northern California as middle infielders with Wins Above Replacement totals a shade under 30–not Hall of Famers and maybe not even good enough to be called outright franchise icons, but guys whom fans will remember fondly. And in both cases, the Cardinals employed a third-year manager about whom there wasn’t certainty how he would deploy his new veteran.

Comparing Mike Matheny and Oliver Marmol is a tricky proposition–one could argue that both managers inherited a similar MLB team from their predecessors, except that while Tony LaRussa’s Wild Card team won the World Series, Mike Shildt’s was eliminated after one game. But in terms of the totality of the situation, while the 2012 and 2022 Cardinals had similar preseason outlooks, the 2012 team had a robust collection of youngsters about to ascend while the 2022 team almost felt like a tribute band version of its former self. Of course, Mike Matheny was also materially more successful in his first two seasons, whether you want to attribute that to factors beyond the manager (I do) or not. But 2014 turned out to be something of a turning point for Matheny, the year in which the extraordinary good fortune of 2012 and 2013 normalized, and while his 2014 season would ultimately be defined by his postseason decision to let Michael Wacha pitch in lieu of Trevor Rosenthal in order to set the stage for Brandon Crawford and the San Francisco Giants to make and eventually win a World Series, arguably the decision which more epitomized his tenure came via his use of Mark Ellis.

Mark Ellis, to be clear, had been better more recently than where Brandon Crawford currently stands–he had, after all, been the eighth most valuable player on the Los Angeles Dodgers team that the Cardinals had just defeated in the 2013 National League Championship Series. But at that stage of his career, he was seemingly brought in to fill a similar role to Brandon Crawford today–that of a veteran to mix and match alongside a rookie who had been rough in his 20_3 debut but was brimming with potential. In 2014, it was Kolten Wong. And through the first twenty-seven games of the 2014 season, Kolten Wong hadn’t lived up to his promise at the plate, with a wRC+ of just 51 and standing at replacement level despite solid base running and fielding metrics. But by any measure, his alternatives at second base were worse–Mark Ellis had a wRC+ of 30 and Daniel Descalso, like Wong a lefty batter, was even worse at -14. But it was Wong who was demoted. Descalso, inevitably, wasn’t that bad all season, but Mark Ellis stayed at a 30 wRC+ for the entirety of 2014. This was where he stood 202 plate appearances into his 2014, when he remained on the Cardinals’ roster for the postseason. Ellis, though decent with the glove still, was jarringly ineffective at the plate, earning six extra bases all season–not six extra-base hits, but six extra bases (six doubles; of his 105 career home runs, none came as a Cardinal).

2014 was a season in which several prominent position players for the Cardinals were outright awful. And in most of these cases, I am inclined to defend Mike Matheny. Ellis aside, the most egregious case of overplaying a bad player was Allen Craig, but even in that case, Craig was a player who had earned MVP votes in both of the previous two seasons, so not being beholden to the small sample size of 2014 was a reasonable move. Oscar Taveras was even worse than Craig at the plate by wRC+, but given his status as arguably the best position player prospect in baseball, playing him was understandable (if anything, many fans including myself wanted Taveras to play more). Tony Cruz and A.J. Pierzynski were terrible, defensive butchers and lackluster hitters, but it wasn’t like Mike Matheny wasn’t playing Yadier Molina as much as he possibly could–this was an organizational failure, not a Mike Matheny one, to not employ a better backup catcher. But Mark Ellis stood out, a deeply frustrating veteran whom it felt the rest of baseball could realize was cooked (indeed, he never played Major League Baseball again after 2014) but was seemingly inevitable on that Cardinals team.

The key for Oli Marmol in 2024, a full decade later, is to recognize that the hopes of this Cardinals team likely do not depend on what Brandon Crawford can or cannot do. But the good news is that, if deployed correctly, Crawford is minimally harmful. Whether Marmol learns a lesson from Cardinals past is what remains to be seen.