Getting to know the biggest acquisition of the offseason.
Who is he and where does he come from?
He’s Garrett Crochet and he comes from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a city that confuses northerners who have no idea that Mississippi even has a coastline. The Red Sox also have starters who hail from Helena, Alabama (Richard Fitts), Okeechobee, Florida (Kutter Crawford), Lilburn, Georgia (Garrett Whitlock), and Carrollton, Georgia (Cooper Criswell), so the pitchers corner of the clubhouse is probably going to smell like a catfish boil and have SEC football podcasts going 24/7.
Crochet was something of a late-bloomer in high school, initially committing to play college baseball at a nearby junior college before adding 6-7 MPH on his fastball as a senior and drawing interest from some of the biggest programs in the South. He ended up at powerhouse Tennessee and, after beginning his freshman season in the bullpen, was named Tennessee’s Friday night starter to open SEC play in 2018. If you’re unfamiliar with college baseball in general and SEC baseball specifically, the Friday night games are a very big deal and being named the Friday starter is a significant honor, especially for a freshman. Unfortunately, Crochet struggled, was bumped back to the bullpen a few weeks later, and finished the year with an ERA over 5 (though he did show his potential with 62 strikeouts in 63.2 innings pitched).
As a sophomore, Crochet again bounced back and forth between the bullpen and rotation and put up a mediocre ERA of 4.02. But he also started hitting 100 MPH on the gun this season, and his strikeout rate exploded to 11.2 strikeouts-per-nine-innings. His stuff was obviously elite, earning him time with the Team USA baseball program and preseason All-American honors. Arm soreness combined with the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out all but 3.1 innings during his junior year, but by that point scouts had seen enough to know that he was a major talent and the White Sox selected him with the 11th overall pick in 2020 MLB draft. A few months later, with the White Sox in the think of the postseason race, Crochet was added to the MLB bullpen, becoming just the 22nd player in history go from the draft to the Majors without playing a single inning of minor league ball.
The Red Sox acquired Crochet in a trade with the White Sox, sending a package highlighted by highly-rated prospects Kyle Teel and Braden Montgomery the other way and mercifully signaling that winning at the Major League level is at least one of the goals of Fenway Sports Group again.
What position does he play?
After being thrust into the bullpen to help a veteran team fighting for a playoff spot, Crochet would make the first 72 appearances of his MLB career as a reliever. But Crochet always viewed himself as a starter and, after missing the entire 2022 season and most of 2023 recovering from Tommy John surgery, the White Sox decided they would move him to the rotation for the 2024 season. He quickly proved that he belonged.
Is he any good?
Jacob Roy already wrote 2,000 words explaining just how good he is at throwing a baseball, so, in lieu of that, I’ll tell you some other things he’s good at:
- Having arm tattoos.
- Shaving his head.
- Graciously (if awkwardly) responding to obnoxious fan comments.
- Masking up and taking goofy pictures in Downtown Chicago.
- Remaining completely stone-faced as his manager lists his accomplishments in front of the rest of the team.
- Destroying Andrew Benintendi with his extensive knowledge of pop music trivia.
- Dramatically running across the shifting desert sands with a beautiful but impractically dressed woman.
Show me a cool highlight.
Seven straight strikeouts against the less demonic New York team sounds pretty cool to me.
What’s he doing in his picture up there?
Wishing he was back in the desert, because anything is better than being on the White Sox.
What’s his role on the 2025 Red Sox?
He will be the best pitcher on the 2025 Red Sox, and on the 2026 Red Sox, too. The big question is whether he’ll remain on the team thereafter.