Leandre: Landing All-Star southpaw should be Red Sox top pitching priority
The Boston Red Sox missed out on signing 2023 NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell late Tuesday. They must see to it they don't miss out on another elite left-hander.
In the aftermath of left-hander Blake Snell’s signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Boston Red Sox were again linked to Chicago White Sox flamethrower Garrett Crochet.
Jon Morosi of MLB Network went on the air and told the baseball world to look out for the Red Sox in these sweepstakes.
He later added that the White Sox are so far from contention, despite reports outfielder Wilyer Abreu could headline an outgoing package, that they may opt for a prospect-laden return.
Either way, securing the 2024 All-Star should be Boston’s top priority as it looks to bolster its starting pitching, even if that means making top shortstop prospect, No. 3 overall on Sox Prospects, Marcelo Mayer available.
This is historically what the Red Sox do when they’re ready to stand 10 toes down and contend for championships.
In 2004, they traded lefties Casey Fossum and Jorge de la Rosa alongside right-hander Brandon Lyon to secure Curt Schilling. Ahead of 2006, they traded shortstop Hanley Ramirez and right-hander Aníbal Sánchez to acquire Josh Beckett (and Mike Lowell). Before 2017, they traded the top prospect in baseball, Yoán Moncada, and Michael Kopech to net Chris Sale.
This is how they ranked league-wide at the time of each trade, plus last season:
While the context is different in those three seasons versus this one, that shouldn’t change the team’s urgency.
Crochet makes all the sense in the world for Boston for several reasons. For starters, he’s a swing-and-miss artist. In his 146 innings of work, he racked up a swinging strike rate of 16.2 percent. Among starters with at least 100 innings, that ranked second only to the aforementioned Snell.
As a team, Boston tied for 19th among all rotations at 10.3 percent, along with the Toronto Blue Jays.
Now that’s just looking at the percentage of pitches yielding whiffs, what about on swings?
Crochet was in the 93rd percentile last year, getting whiffs on 33.1% of swings across his 32 starts. The Red Sox's leading starter was Brayan Bello, who ranked in the 53rd percentile at 25.9 percent.
While a whiff on one out of every three swings versus one out of every four may not seem significant, it is. Especially when it comes to putting hitters away, which the Red Sox struggled to do after the All-Star Break.
Combined with the struggles to put hitters away in the second half, it felt like the game caught on to the lack of desire Boston had to throw the fastball.
Overall, the team threw the second-fewest among starting rotations, despite average-ish results. They ranked bottom-ten in perceived velocity but tied for eighth in opponent batting average and middle of the pack in xwOBA.
No one on staff truly had a lights-out fastball, save for Nick Pivetta who likely departs in free agency this winter. Crochet, on the other hand, had the sixth-highest four-seam fastball run value and second-best whiff rate in the league with a minimum of 250 batters faced.
Another reason Crochet makes a ton of sense for Boston is his willingness to sign an extension. Last year, a major talking point around his market at the trade deadline was his unwillingness to pitch without an extension.
While public perception consisted largely of dragging him through the mud, a team like the Red Sox should be ecstatic about the opportunity to acquire someone they know wants to be around for a while.
Now, he’s only got one more year of arbitration after 2025, so the pay-day is coming soon for the young left-hander, but acting quickly very well could secure the immensely talented Crochet for the next seven to 10 years.
Seeing as he’s 25 years old, it’s not quite the same as when the Red Sox extended Sale, who was coming off a shoulder injury and entering his age-30 season. Extending Crochet now should be seen as guaranteeing his best days are in Boston and not at a price tag of paying a guy for what he’s done above what you expect moving forward.
While Crochet’s resume is nothing like Sale’s at the time of extension, it’s worth noting that Sale had nearly 1,500 innings under his belt with a violent delivery that many predicted would create arm issues when Boston acquired.
On the other hand, Crochet had elbow surgery in 2022 and has just 219 MLB innings under his belt.
The extension probably looks something like seven years, $120 million, or, if Crochet wanted a chance to cash out in his prime, something like five years, $80 million. It’s not exactly backbreaking for the Red Sox to pony that up.
As a resident prospect-hugger, I understand the fear that comes with trading away an elite prospect like Mayer or Kristian Campbell.
It’s a scary world, especially as it pertains to something so physically volatile as pitching nowadays. However, the Red Sox have largely played it safe in recent years, oftentimes to their detriment.
You can go deep into the bag of blockbuster deals over the years and find lopsided ones for both sides, but for Chief Baseball Officer Craig Breslow to balk at this deal barring an unforeseen ridiculous asking price or offer elsewhere would make him no better than the previous CBO, Chaim Bloom.
You can’t survive in this market playing it safe, much less scared. Trading for and extending Crochet gives the Red Sox exactly what they need, a young, controllable starting pitcher with ace-caliber stuff.
That’s going to cost a lot, and Boston should have no problem paying the piper.
