One thing for sure, Reggie Crawford has plenty of pitching potential, and it is surely showing up in all these projections for the MLB draft next year. Crawford barely pitched in his first season with UConn, and when he did, he clearly had problems with control. While Crawford didn’t see a lot of mound time for UConn in 2021, the improvement in his pitching game was quite clear. Looking back at it now, I suspect that Crawford was definitely hurt by the lack of midweek games this season, as he would have been a natural choice in being a midweek starter. At any rate, the attention at Crawford’s pitching potential really rose this summer between his outrageous strikeout rate and the measurements on the radar guns that were trained on him when he did pitch.
So right now it looks like that based on his big pitching potential, Crawford rates to go very high in the next MLB draft. As Andrew Marrero and others have shown, potential is a big thing when it comes to the MLB draft. This fall and spring are big for Crawford’s baseball future. He has tantalized us with what he can do in his limited appearances this spring and summer. Now Crawford needs to show his huge potential on a more regular basis this fall while he is in training in becoming a starting pitcher, and then in the late winter and spring when he starts out by taking the mound to start games every weekend. The big question becomes can he stand up to more regular work on the mound. Assuming he does, then one would think the sky is the limit for him in terms of the MLB draft. The hint that we have received so far via a Hartford Courant article is that Crawford will begin as the Sunday starter, which makes sense since he has never been a regular starting pitcher before. But I would guess that if he shows he can do the job, I would expect that Coach Penders might have him migrating to being a Friday starter before the season is over, especially if Crawford shows that he can eat up some innings with his talented arm.