That’s how good he is.
Something finally happened. As you likely know by now, the Red Sox swung a deal with the White Sox that sent LHP Garrett Crochet to Boston in exchange for prospects. Crochet is 25 years old, a 2024 American League All-Star, and has two years remaining on his rookie contract.
If you want a less biased look at Garrett Crochet, you can read my analysis of Crochet before he was pitching for my favorite team here. If you want to read a few sentences in which I compare myself to a sexually aroused cartoon wolf, you can use that same link. Now that Crochet is on the Red Sox and will likely start on opening day, let’s take a deeper look.
Before I completely lose my mind over Crochet, I’ll start with his biggest red flag: lack of experience. I, for one, am not overly worried about his low innings total but won’t argue with those who are. The White Sox babied Crochet in his first season as a starter, limiting him in the second half of the season. For a pitcher of his quality making the transition from the bullpen to the rotation, that’s fairly standard procedure. After making it through a full season in which he threw 146 innings, he should be set up to throw 170-180 innings in 2025. Every pitcher comes with injury risk. Moreso, those who throw hard almost always end up getting Tommy John surgery. Crochet went under the knife in 2022 and returned to action in 2023. While he hasn’t thrown a full season as a starter, he’s been handled with care and is set up for success in 2025 and beyond.
Now, on to the positives. Garrett Crochet is awesome, and he’s only going to improve. In his first season as a starter, he struck out 35.1% of the hitters he faced and he did it with 82% fastballs and cutters. He treats each plate appearance as if the hitter is holding a bat for the very first time and has no chance. While the hitters may have experience, he’s often right that they don’t stand a chance.
We’ll start with the fastball. Crochet gets massive extension by striding down the mound with his 6’6” frame. He averaged 97 MPH with the pitch, reaching 100 MPH at times. Of starters with 500 fastballs thrown in 2024, his swinging strike rate (16.6%) was second behind only George Kirby. Since StatCast tracking was introduced in 2015, that mark would have been the best by a Red Sox starter, ahead of Chris Sale’s 2017 (15.6%) and 2018 (16.5%) seasons, as well as Rick Porcello’s 2016 Cy Young campaign (14.8%). If we open that up to the entire league, Crochet ranks 12th of 2,114 starters with 500 four-seams thrown in a season. He throws it often and there’s little anyone can do about it.
His secondary offering is his cutter. I’ll spare you the boring swinging strike rate rankings (10th/333 starters with 500 thrown in a season) and tell you that the pitch is awesome. Like the fastball, he’s often throwing it over the plate and daring batters to hit it. It looks like his fastball on release but darts toward right-handed hitters and drops in comparison to his heater. Even when hitters get it in play, it’s on the ground more often than not (53.4% groundball rate).
Those two pitches make up 82% of Crochet’s arsenal. They were all Crochet needed to dominate lineups. At 25 years old, however, there’s still plenty of time for the lefty to blossom. At the end of 2024, we saw Crochet begin to evolve when he started throwing more sinkers. He threw his first major league sinker in August of last season, and by September it was an effective offering. We’re dealing with a very small sample (50 pitches), but the pitch showed positive traits in that small sample. Nobody hit a Garrett Crochet out of the infield. Nobody even hit one in the air. He consistently located it on the arm side and jammed lefties inside. Two fastballs are hard enough for a hitter to prepare for. Three is virtually impossible.
Crochet can’t possibly have more weapons, can he? Not so fast, my friend. We’ve only just begun. He also throws a sweeper that gets a ton of whiffs. No notes from me there. What I do want to talk about is the changeup. Crochet only threw the pitch to righties and didn’t use it very often. He was likely correct in leaving that one on the shelf because the pitch just isn’t that good. The zone rate was incredibly low at 23.9%. Hitters didn’t expand the zone frequently either (31.5% chase rate).
Crochet’s lack of success with his changeup reminds me of Tanner Houck’s splitter. Houck couldn’t locate his splitter in the zone and like Crochet, hitters didn’t chase. When Andrew Bailey took over as the Red Sox pitching coach, Houck changed the grip on his splitter to a more traditional changeup grip and the pitch suddenly became a legitimate weapon.
I’ve seen Crochet draw comparisons to reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. While Crochet has displayed his dominance, he doesn’t have a weapon to throw away from righties like Skubal’s dominant changeup. Crochet has shown he doesn’t need one, but having more quality pitches would allow him to adjust from batter to batter, inning to inning, and start to start. If Crochet starts showing off a new and improved changeup early in 2025, get your Cy Young tickets in before it’s too late.
If the last 700 words weren’t clear enough, I’m a huge fan of Garrett Crochet. Enough about the player, though. Let’s go back to my first sentence: Something finally happened. For the past several years the offseason has been filled with inaction. Seemingly every time a free agent came off the board, a tweet noting the Red Sox were interested followed. While this isn’t a free-agent signing, it is the first time in a long time that the Red Sox have used significant prospect capital to acquire major league talent. Actions speak louder than words. Ownership has repeatedly told you that they’re trying to win now. Trading future assets for a current one signifies the willingness to compete in 2025 and beyond, far more than any words can.