By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor 
When you consider that Philadelphia Phillies prospect J.P. Crawford is widely considered to be a top five prospect in the entire league, there was a noticeable lack of buzz surrounding the 22-year-old during his stint at major league camp this year.
Crawford was sent to minor league camp last Friday and is expected to open the season at Triple-A Lehigh Valley, where his production stalled in 336 at-bats last year, as he slashed just .244/.328/.318.
The former first-round pick will be reunited with his former Double-A manager Dusty Wathan this year, who was promoted to being the Triple-A manager after the 2016 season. Wathan spoke to Jim Salisbury of Comcast SportNet Philadelphia about a variety of topics during a recent podcast and said that he thinks that Crawford hitting a speed-bump for the first time during his professional baseball career may have been a blessing in disguise:
"J.P. is a tremendous talent, great person. He wants it as much as anybody else wants it for him, as much as the Philly fans want him to be that guy, he wants it just as bad, if not worse than any of those people out there. I think J.P.'s a guy that he's been so highly touted since the day he was drafted, even prior to his draft, that everybody expects 'oh, how come he doesn't have two years in the big leagues yet?'. Everybody develops at their own pace and J.P., he had a learning curve last year, which is good. We want these guys to fail at some point in their career. Hopefully they fail before they get to the big leagues so that they can accept that failure, they know how to get out of slumps, they know how to get around failure. When it happens, it happens. It happens to everybody, in every walk of life. Sometimes there's going to be low points, sometimes there's going to be high points. You hope there's a lot more high ones than there are low. And he went through a low point last year, which is great for us from a development side. I mean, yes, J.P. might not think it is so great, but I think he's learned to embrace that and knows what he needs to do for this year and what he needs to do for his career going forward."
Crawford was one of numerous prospects that Wathan raved about during the interview, which makes you understand why he's been so successful as a minor league manager himself. It also gives you hope that as Wathan moves up, he'll be able to reignite the production of Crawford, who is far from the first highly ranked prospect to hit a bit of a wall at the Triple-A level.
Related: Could Dusty Wathan be the Phillies long-term manager?
Wathan went on to praise Crawford for what we regularly hear are his top attributes, such as his ability to work a count and his Gold Glove potential in the field. He also suggested that Crawford has a higher upside power-wise than what both his minor league production and scouting reports have suggested:
"I think J.P. is going to be a very good shortstop. I think he'll end up developing a little bit of power. He's got power in his bat and sometimes it gets him in a little trouble right now, but obviously like you said he controls the strike zone, he puts great at-bats together, he can handle the bat, do a lot of things with the bat, and we've all seen what he can do with the glove. So, I think, in the not-so-distant future, we're going to look at a really good shortstop. We're going to look back and say, 'wow, J.P. Crawford was an anchor to a very good era in Phillies history.'"
Wathan, Crawford and the Lehigh Valley IronPigs will begin the organization's 10th season on April 6, when they welcome the Pawtucket Red Sox to Coca-Cola Park.
