Kutter Crawford continues to provide quality outings when the Red Sox need it most
Red Sox starter Kutter Crawford was terrific on Sunday afternoon, earning his fourth win of the season, defeating the Cubs 11-6 from Wrigley Field.
Crawford tossed six scoreless frames allowing just one hit while walking four and hitting one other. He also struck out a career high nine batters, inducing 17 swings-and-misses, setting a career high. The righty earned five whiffs with his fastball, five with his cutter, five with his sweeper and two with his slider in the outing, per Baseball Savant.
Boston will feature back-to-back openers to begin the series on Oakland on Monday night. Crawford’s start proved to be very important, limiting the use of the Sox bullpen and giving Alex Cora flexibility heading into the three-game set before heading home this weekend.
“Obviously where we’re at right now, [Crawford’s outing] was huge,” Sox manager Alex Cora said. “It’s not fair for [Paxton, Bello, and Crawford], but we cannot have too many short outings. They’ve got to go five and six innings.”
Cora referred to Crawford’s pitch options as a “buffet” and that he can sometimes make poor choices with his selection.
“We want to stay away from the Jell-O,” Crawford said.
His four-seam fastball lacked the ingredients for an appetizing main course for Cubs batters to try and feast on. Instead he had to rely on his side dish pitches to get the job done.
“I didn’t have a great feel for the fastball, so I had to go to other options,” he said. “That’s one of the good things about throwing five pitches.”
While he seemed to dominate the Cubs lineup, he was not devoid of traffic on the base paths during his appearance.
“He’s got a number of pitches that move in different directions with different velos. Depending on what he has on a given day, he has the ability to mix and match different sequences, different usage patterns,” Red Sox pitching coach Dave Bush said. “He gave us six scoreless on a day he didn’t feel his best. The ability to do that is showing the growth he’s had the last three years.”
Boston has been getting great pitching performances from Brayan Bello, James Paxton (minus Saturday afternoon’s clunker) and Crawford the last couple of weeks. With Chris Sale, Tanner Houck and Garrett Whitlock nursing injuries, the club has welcomed the key performances from Crawford.
“He’s grown so much,” Cora said. “You can see the results.”
The Sox have won four out of the last five outings that Crawford has appeared in. The right-hander posted a 3.04 ERA with 26 strikeouts and eight walks in 23 2/3 innings during that stretch.
“Hopefully we can continue to play some good baseball collectively,” he said, “and we’ll see what happens towards the end of the year.”
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