Baseball players don't lose thier speed. If you check out the really great ones, they were still very fast right up till they quit. Carl Crawford is a great one. He might lose a little, but when you can tag up from second and score, you can afford to lose a little.
This.
Yes, for some the speed disappears a little as they get older. But Crawford has the body type and fitness habits to keep his speed relatively well when he gets a bit older and if he's in LF his defense isn't going to be a huge drop off. Guys like Ichiro, Pierre and Podsednik are few guys who are older but still have some speed. You also take one of the biggest base-stealing threats away from competitors, which is a huge "addition by subtraction" since our catchers have noodle arms. Crawford is one of the best, pure athletes in the game...he was recruited by big name college football teams to play QB and I believe was recruited on a lesser scale for basketball as well.
I understand people think they overpaid for him and maybe they did a little when you use the tradtional stats to compare him to a Matt Holliday or Carlos Gonzalez, but Crawford should not be compared to Lugo or Drew or Renteria. None of those guys have done what Carl has done consistently over the last eight years. The market for OF'ers in the next 2 years is rather bare, with guys coming back from injuries or other types of reclamation projects (Sizemore, Beltran, Ordonez, etc).
CC was a 6.9 WAR last year and 5.7 a year before that, and this was after spending alot of his career in the "Crappy Devil Ray" team years as a still very respectable 4.0 avg WAR guy. The OBP and protection that the Red Sox line-up offer him vs. what TB had is night and day. He had the NINTH highest WAR among players in the entire league last year. Not ninth among OF'ers, ninth among all position players in the entire Major Leagues. People point to his attitude about not wanting to play CF in Tampa Bay and say he is a little emotionally unstable, but you have to realize this is a guy with 8 years of starting experience at the age of 28-29. He has played on terrible, just awful teams down there and he has played in the playoffs the last two years on a good team that couldn't get their fans excited even for playoff games. When he comes into Fenway Park and sees sold-out crowds day after day, it is electrifying and he will appreciate it.
The Sox have Kalish and Reddick coming up within 2 years, but they aren't "can't miss" superstar prospects. In addition, before arbitration raises and Gonzo/CC contracts, they had something like $80 million coming off the books by the end of 2011 season and Dice-K will probably be gone by the end of 2012 to add another $10 million in relief. Drew, Lowell, Ortiz, V-Mart, Beltre, Scutaro, Bill Hall, and there is a good chance Papelbon may get moved as well.
Their positional needs long term are still OF (Don't fully trust Ellsbury to stay healthy), C and SS. You have Iglesias who may be able to come up and man SS, if Lowrie doesn't pan out. There is no real big name guy for them to miss out on the next couple of years and certainly no big name catchers I know of that are available. They have the money to spend, and that is obvious between their payroll and the fact that they spend a TON more on the draft and prospect bonuses than any other team in the league. They traded away 3 of their top 6 prospects to SD and still have a loaded farm system with additional picks from Martinez and Beltre signings coming in the upcoming draft.
They didn't miss out on Teixeira because they couldn't afford him. They had the highest offer out there (I think) when the Yankees came in at the last second, and it's pretty well known that his wife wanted him to go to NY. A happy wife is a happy life, as the saying goes.
