SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Brandon Crawford had a lively offseason, but not for the reason you might think. Four children 10 or younger, each playing multiple sports and two in hip-hop classes, can reorder your priorities. Think chauffeur and snack boxes.

“I was their private driver,” Crawford said with a smile at the Giants’ Spring Training facility on Thursday. “It was busy, but it was fun.”

His personal offseason regimen was busy, too. Crawford is arguably the best shortstop in Giants history and definitely the most durable, with 1,561 games played and two World Series rings. But as he enters his 13th season -- after turning 36 in January -- he figured an early start could not hurt.

“Pretty much every other year I have taken a month off for recovery, mental and physical,” Crawford said. “To get away from baseball a little bit and be with the family and let the body recover and the brain recover from a long season.

“I’m not one of the young guys anymore, so just figured I might as well get going earlier.”

Crawford had two of the best years of his career in 2020 and ’21, but right knee inflammation sent him to the injured list twice last season and hampered his productivity. His .652 OPS was a career low in a full season. He spent time at the Giants’ Spring Training facility with hitting coach Justin Viele examining his swing, sessions made easier because Crawford lives in Scottsdale.

“There wasn’t necessarily one thing we were looking at,” Crawford said. “There were still a lot of good parts to my swing that just weren’t all coming together last year until kind of near the end of the season. I don’t think it was a coincidence that my knee felt a lot better after the IL stints.

“We just wanted to make sure I was finding the barrel a little more consistently like I did the last month, month-and-a-half last season, and by doing that, just making sure my bat path was close to what it was in ’21 and in ’20, when my swing was feeling pretty good. Obviously, the results were there, too.”

Crawford had the best two home run rates of his career those seasons, with eight in 172 at-bats in pandemic-shortened 2020 and 24 in 483 at-bats in ’21, the result of a determined focus on lifting the ball. He believes he might have taken that too far.

“The things we worked on before were not hitting ground balls and cleaning up the bat path in a way where I could hit the ball in the air more,” he said. “I feel like maybe there was almost too much focus on that from me. Not from [the organization]. I think there was too much focus on that, and I was in and out of the zone a little bit.”

Crawford considers the Carlos Correa saga old news not worth discussing now, but Giants manager Gabe Kapler said it could not have been easy for him.

"Crawford has been the shortstop here for a really, really long time,” Kapler said. “To even have to go through the mental and emotional exercise of what amounts to be, in his brain, the end of that run -- that’s a huge challenge in and of itself.

“I think he handled it very well. But by no means is that sort of thing easy for a player."

• Now with Giants, Conforto working his way back

Crawford is the lone holdover from the Giants’ 2012 and ’14 World Series title teams, and it is evident that he takes his leadership role seriously. When the Giants did cutoff and relay drills on the first day of full camp, he went full-out, literally setting the example for others to follow.

Crawford’s right knee issue is related to cartilage damage, which he had treated with cortisone last year for the first time in his career.

“It’s cartilage thing, so it is not necessarily going to heal itself,” he said. “I just hope to keep it strong enough around the [joint] to relieve the pain that I feel from it. There are certain movements that still don’t feel great, but if I can keep it to where it is right now, it will be fine for the season.”

Kapler said load management will factor in Crawford’s usage.

“The No. 1 priority with Brandon is to keep him healthy, keep him strong physically, and things will work themselves out,” Kapler said.

• Right-hander Tristan Beck is scheduled to start the Cactus League opener Saturday against the Cubs in Mesa (12:05 p.m. PT, live on MLB.TV).

“We see him as a future piece of our rotation,” Kapler said. “While these are very much exhibition games, they are also opportunities for our young players to get their feet wet.”

Beck, 26, was 5-9 with a 5.25 ERA in 23 Minor League appearances at two levels in 2022.