First, it's worth mentioning there are crises and there are crises.
This is the unitalicized sort of crisis. Allen Craig's guaranteed to earn another $25 million. Even if he's emotionally devastated by his precipitous performance decline, his demotion to the minors, and now his removal from Boston's 40-man roster, at least he can afford to see a good shrink every day if necessary.
Craig suffered a lisfranc fracture in his foot at the end of the 2013 season and was never himself in 2014 before reaggravating his left foot following a trade to Boston. (Craig, along with Joe Kelly, joined the Sox in exchange for John Lackey.) Over his past 564 Major League plate appearances, Craig is hitting just .207/.275/.302. The Sox had already optioned him to Triple-A earlier this month, but the outright removes him from the 40-man roster, which is now at 37.
Much of this is probably old news. We all know that Craig's struggled since that magical 2013 when he batted about .750 with runners on base. Some people even thought he actually possessed magical abilities!
Anyway, we never really got a chance to find out, since he clearly didn't have some magical ability to stay healthy. But I offer all this just as a reminder that baseball players' statistics rise and fall for all sorts of different reasons, and if you merely looked at Craig's numbers on Baseball-Reference.com, you wouldn't have any idea about his lisfranc fracture. When I see something like Craig's numbers, I usually just assume there was an injury. Sometimes I'll be wrong. But it's better than assuming the guy stopped trying to be good at his job.
