You love the Crawford Boxes when an Astro dumps a cheap homer into that short left field porch. Who can forget Carlos Correa’s moonshot in Game 5 of the 2017 World Series that seemed to go straight up in the air like a popup before depositing in the second row of the Crawford Boxes? The building shook with excitement.
You hate them when a pitcher for the Astros who had been pitching well gives up what looks like a routine fly ball, only for it to go to that same spot.
Oh, well. It’s a quirk of the Astros home field, Daikin Park.
“The Crawford Boxes giveth, and the Crawford Boxes taketh away.” A common mantra in our TLA Discord server gamethreads.
That’s a level-headed way to look at it, but sometimes you wonder if the give and take is even.
I decided to take a look at every “Crawford Box Special” over the past 3 years to find out, but first I had to define what “Crawford Box Special” was. Well, everyone knows what a Crawford Box special is; “you know it when you see it.” Defining it proved to be trickier.
My feeling was that it’s not just any left field home run, it has to be one that literally deposits the ball into the Crawford Boxes seating area. If the ball strike the Community Leaders signs above the Crawford Boxes, that doesn’t count; those balls were crushed. They also need to be batted balls that by exit velocity and launch angle usually would be an out, but when aimed toward left field, and specifically Daikin Park’s left field, they’re a home run.
I elected to search on Baseball Savant for right-handed hitter pull home runs and left-handed hitter opposite field home runs from 2024-2026, with xBA ≤ .500.
- Astros RHH with pull side home runs with an xBA ≤ .500 (48 home runs)
- Astros LHH with oppo home runs with an xBA ≤ .500 (9 home runs)
- Visitor RHH with pull side home runs with an xBA ≤ .500 (45 home runs)
- Visitor LHH with oppo home runs with an xBA ≤ .500 (25 home runs)
These parameters seemed to work pretty well. I watched each of these (and you can too by clicking on those links; it’s pretty fun) to make sure they all indeed landed within the boxes, and they all did with a couple acceptable exceptions of a home run hitting the base of the foul pole, and another just hitting the wall behind the Crawford Box seats closest to the foul pole.
These aren’t all the home runs that land in the Crawford Boxes. I did a search limiting the xBA to .300 and expanded it to .500 when I noticed some Crawford Box specials I knew existed weren’t captured. I’m sure there’s other I’m still not capturing, and that there are ways to be more inclusive of all home runs to the Crawford Boxes. (If you have any search parameter adjustment ideas, share them in the comments.)
Again though, it’s all dependent on how you define a Crawford Box Special.
A lot of these are the kind you would expect. Fly balls that just sneak into the boxes, like this one by Jose Altuve last year against the Twins, a 342 foot home run in Daikin Park and nowhere else:
Most of them are home runs in 5 out of 30 park or less, many in just Daikin, but a few of them are home runs in more, including this one by Isaac Paredes against the Angels last year, a 353 foot home run that supposedly is a home run in 19/30 MLB Parks. It still falls within the parameters, and it still looks like a Crawford Box home run to me, so it still counts:
Here’s the final tally for Crawford Box Home Runs from 2024 through 2026 at the time of this writing:
| Player | Crawford Box Home Runs |
|---|---|
| Jose Altuve | 13 |
| Isaac Paredes | 10 |
| Jeremy Pena | 7 |
| Alex Bregman | 5 |
| Mauricio Dubon | 3 |
| Kyle Tucker* | 3 |
| Cam Smith | 2 |
| Jake Meyers | 2 |
| Yordan Alvarez* | 2 |
| Zack Short | 2 |
| Christian Vazquez | 1 |
| Christian Walker | 1 |
| Victor Caratini | 1 |
| Yainer Diaz | 1 |
| Lamonte Wade, Jr.* | 1 |
| Braden Shewmake* | 1 |
| Jesus Sanchez* | 1 |
| Jon Singleton* | 1 |
| ASTROS TOTAL | 57 |
| OPPONENT TOTAL | 70 |
Defined as RHH pull or LHH oppo home runs with xBA ≤ .500
Must land in the Crawford Boxes seating area.
* denotes LHH
Jose Altuve, to nobody’s surprise, leads this list, followed by Isaac Paredes, even though he didn’t even play for the Astros in 2024. His batted ball spray chart always made it seem like he would be a strong fit with the Astros, as TLA editor Cody Poage pointed out after the trade to the Astros.
Right handed hitters obviously dominate the list; the boxes were designed for righties like Jeff Bagwell to pull the ball into. Just 9 of the 57 the Astros have come from left-handed hitters. Part of that is because the Astros just don’t have as many left-handed bats as other teams. They’re ranked last in the majors last year and this year for left-handed plate appearances.
Astros opponents are getting more Crawford Box specials out of their left-handed hitters than the Astros. They’re getting more Crawford Box specials, in general, than the Astros, which is not ideal.
It’s the Astros home park. They can construct their roster and lineup with the knowledge that 50% of their games will be played with the Crawford Boxes in left field, but opponents are benefiting from them more than the Astros are.
The Crawford Boxes giveth and the Crawford Boxes taketh away, but it’d be nice if they offered a more friendly domestic exchange rate.
Tigers @ Astros Game Information and Gamethread Details
The Detroit Tigers come to town for a 3 game series, in the midst of a season maybe even more disappointing than the Astros’. Considered by many to be the preseason favorite to win the AL Central, they’ve been beleaguered by underperformance and injuries and at 29-45, sit in 4th place in the AL Central, 9.5 games out of the division lead, 6.0 games out from the wild card.
The Astros are 4.0 games behind the Mariners for the division, and 3.0 games behind the A’s and Rangers for the Wild Card. The Astros are still trying, still “chasing the fight”, albeit poorly.
Are the Tigers still trying? “It doesn’t feel like they’re trying,” a writer over at Bless You Boys told me. A trade of ace Tarik Skubal is imminent. Fortunately, for the Astros, they’ll miss Skubal’s turn in the rotation.
Tonight, they’ll face Troy Melton, a 25 year-old right handed pitcher in his second year, who makes his 5th start of the season.
It seems the usual scenario for the Astros this season is they face a pitcher whose traditional stats don’t look all the great, but a deeper look into their peripherals shows they’re actually pitching much better than those traditional stats would suggest.
That’s not the case with Melton. Melton is 3-0 with a 2.81 ERA and 1.01 WHIP, and a 2.1 BB/9. His K/9 is just 4.9 thought, one of the lower strikeout rates we’ve seen from an opposing starting pitcher this season.
It’s hard to keep up this kind of success without being able to strike hitters out. So while he has a pretty 2.81 ERA, his xERA, FIP, xFIP and SIERA are higher are 4.34, 5.36, 4.56 and 4.81.
Melton throws 6 pitches: a 4 seamer, slider, cutter, splitter, sinker and curve. His 4 seam fastball averages 95.8 mph, which he pairs primarily with his slider. He is allowing just a .211 batting average, but that is due for regression as he has one of the larger discrepancies between his BAA and xBAA (.272).
Kai-Wei Teng starts for the Astros. The concern with Teng transitioning to being a start was that historically he had difficulty with the second time through the order. He’s improved this year with that, but now he’s been struggling with the third time through the order, which he’d barely ever faced before this year.
Last time out, he struggled with the first time through the order and was shelled for 7 runs, 5 earned in 4 innings against the Angels, with all 7 of those runs coming in the first 2 innings. He is now 3-5 on the season in 7 starts and 13 relief appearances, with a 3.71 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, and 8.6 K/9. Walks remain a problem with a 4.2 BB/9.
This post will be updated with starting lineups as they are made available.
Update: Troy Melton has been scratched due to back tightness and the Tigers will go witha bullpen game, opening with Drew Anderson.
The game will be broadcast at 7:10 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.
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Crawford Box shots at least are better now (and IMO, have been better for 26 years now after the 2000 season) than they were previously…..where our pitchers were absolutely NOT READY to pitch in Daikin Park and pitched like they were still in the Astrodome.
It felt completely HELPLESS in 2000 because our guys knew not how to approach it, and the opponent from the most miniscule punch and judy hitter to feared slugger licked their chops aiming for the Crawford Boxes and more often than not….connected.
It makes me laugh at the notion that Daikin is a “launchpad” when again, that hasn’t been true since 2000 (it averaged out to neutral literally the very next season and has remained neutral for the most part since). That 2000 season just stuck in everyone’s mind and they ran with it.
I wasn’t around in Houston in 2000, and I was pretty firmly an AL guy at that time (though without allegiance to a specific team, except my AL-only fantasy team). It would be interestign to run these Savant searches on the 2000 season based on what you’re saying, if it were possible.
I remember looking up the numbers a few years ago (can’t remember if it was on Savant or elsewhere) and I recall it actually proving true (there were a couple of seasons here and there that it spiked up again but would average out to neutral again). I’ll see if I can find it again.
Yeah, if you know of a different way to look up crawford box home runs, I’d be interested. My RHH-pull/LHH-oppo with xBA <=.500 is pretty arbitrary, but I’m not sure how else to do it that wouldnt be super inefficient. Distance maybe.
That first season was also peak steroid use in MLB.
The Astros made a physical “fix” of the problem of a short LF after the 2000 season. The Astros “fixed” the HR explosion to some degree in 2001 by raising the yellow home run line from 9 feet to 21 feet across the three concrete archways located directly to the right of the left-field Crawford Boxes. That cut out section next to the Crawford Boxes had basically expanded the impact of the Boxes. The adjustment limited the Crawford Box HR effect to the boxes themselves. This created a surprisingly robust reduction in LF home runs which made Enron Field seem more normal. Today when we watch fly balls to LF we wonder which side of that right Crawford Box rail it will land, because if it hits the wall in that cut out section, it will likely not be high enough to be a HR. But in 2000, it would have been more likely to be a HR.
heres a good pic
Just a side note, I feel Paredes hasn’t been right timing all season. He has missed the porch too many times this season, whereas last season he was golden.
Just from eye test, it’s seemed like he’s been just a touch early a lot this season. He’s crushed a LOT of balls that were just just just foul this year.
Yeah, he’s gotten his overall slashline to a respectable spot, but damn it his slugging that is holding him back.
His on base is fine relative to his average, meaning he’s seeing the ball fine…and he seems to be making decent contact…damn ball is just not falling in the right spot or the ball isn’t carrying enough to get out. Lol.
Maybe the optimistic view is that he is just a timing correction away from slugging normally.
I wonder if the Crawford Box element becomes a point of debate when it comes to Altuve’s HOF candidacy . Will they count it against him, arguing that a lot of his home runs were just a product of playing in Houston’s ballpark? I hope not, but by this (arbitrary) definition of RHH-pull HR with <= .500 xBA, Altuve has more than 40 just since 2015 (which is as far back as statcast goes)
I think about that because I remember debating on Twitter at the end of 2019 when there was a Bregman vs Trout MVP debate and Trout got injured a week into September, about whether bregman deserved the MVP if he ended up surpassing Trout in WAR. One independent baseball writer (who I respected and still do a lot) argued vehemently against bregman because he felt that so much of his value was tied to the Crawford Boxes. It was true, by this crawford box special definition, 8 of his 41 home runs were crawford box specials. But in my mind you can’t decide MVPs and HOF based on xstats, they’re retrospective honors, you award them based on what the results actually were.
(that writer coincidentally ended up taking a job in the analytics department for the astros a year or two later. Now he’s with the Pirates. Also Trout, as we all know, did beat Bregma for the MVP, and initially still finished with more WAR. But later that offseason, both fWAR and bWARs formulas were changed and by the new formula, Bregman actually had finished with more bWAR and fWAR than Trout.)