What are the Red Sox getting in new SP Garrett Crochet?
As we’re all probably aware by now, the Red Sox have acquired left-hander Garrett Crochet from the Chicago White Sox in exchange for a four-prospect package including catcher Kyle Teel and outfielder Braden Montgomery. Crochet was one of the top stories of the 2024 season — his first converting from the bullpen to the starting rotation. He was excellent in the breakout campaign, finishing with a 3.58 ERA and a minuscule 2.69 FIP in 32 starts and 146 IP.
Crochet was drafted with the 11th pick of the 2020 draft and rushed to the majors that very season to assist the playoff-bound White Sox out of the bullpen. He returned to the Chicago ‘pen in 2021, turning in a dominant 54.1 innings of 2.82 ERA ball as a mostly one-inning reliever. The White Sox planned to utilize Crochet in more of a swing role in 2022, but a partial tear in his UCL that Spring forced him to miss the whole season with Tommy John surgery. Though Crochet was able to pitch 12 innings of Major League ball in 2023, the 2024 season signified his real return to the mound. His innings were monitored closely, but boy, were they dominant. Here’s a look at what the Red Sox can expect from the new ace of their pitching staff.
The Bread and Butter
Crochet is a power pitcher with two main offerings: a four-seam fastball and a cutter. He threw his four-seamer over half of the time at 54%. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. That number landed Crochet 9th in Major League Baseball (min 100 IP) in fastball usage.
The reason he kept going back to it, though, was that it kept working. He averaged 97.1 mph on the pitch with 93rd-percentile extension, meaning he releases the ball much further in front of him than the average pitcher. Having this much extension gives the hitter even less time to react as the pitch approaches the plate, a small advantage that makes a big difference because it helps make Crochet’s fastball-cutter combo all the more effective. In addition to the extension, Crochet does a great job of tunneling (keeping his release points consistent) the two pitches, meaning that the 91 mph cutter looks just like the fastball until the very last moment when it breaks sharply to his glove side. He threw the cutter about 28% of the time this season, meaning that he’s throwing one of those two pitches on a whopping 82% of his offerings.
An approach like this would have doomed Crochet to spend his entire career in the bullpen not so long ago, but pitchers like Jacob deGrom and Spencer Strider have proven that starters can be successful with a dominant two-pitch arsenal. Crochet led all pitchers (min 100 IP) in K% in 2024, striking out over 35% of the batters he faced, so the two-pitch approach seems to be working out for him just fine.
The Secondaries
Crochet can clearly be effective spamming those two pitches, but what if he were to develop his other two offerings – a sweeper and a changeup he threw just 10% and 6% of the time, respectively – into more prominent weapons in his arsenal? That’s something he expressed interest in doing during a late August interview with David Laurila of FanGraphs.
The sweeper, in particular, looks like it could be a tantalizing addition. Of the 234 times he threw the pitch this season, Crochet generated whiffs on roughly 100 of them, good for a staggering 42.7% whiff rate. The pitch sits at about 84 mph, opening up a whole new velocity band for hitters to think about. It also has 14 inches of glove-side movement, over double the amount of his cutter, giving Crochet a true out pitch. If he’s also able to successfully add the changeup to his arsenal, he’d have a fourth pitch with similar velocity to the cutter that moves in the other direction. That’s pretty scary to think about.
Efficiency is Key
In his interview with Laurila, Crochet mentioned an emphasis on efficiency in his first season back from surgery as the reason he didn’t tinker with his secondaries more. In this season especially, Crochet preferred to attack hitters so as not to waste any of the limited number of pitches he was allowed to throw. In the coming season, with fewer restrictions, we might see a bit more experimentation.
Crochet won’t want to give up too much efficiency, though. He was top-20 among pitchers (min 100 IP) at keeping the ball in the zone (45.8%) and tied for 2nd at generating In-Zone Swing-and-Miss (20.9%). This combination led to a top-20 BB% (5.5%), and a league-leading K-BB% (29.6%). These are the exact qualities that Craig Breslow has been vocally searching for since taking over the Red Sox last offseason, and he will surely want Crochet to keep it up.
Workload is going to be the number one concern when it comes to Crochet. The talent is all there but he has yet to demonstrate that he can handle all the innings that come with being a true ace. That’s not to say that he definitively cannot do it. It’s just that, because he was first deployed as a reliever, and then missed a season for surgery, he hasn’t yet had the chance. Being efficient with his pitches can only help him shoulder the load, and put less stress on the elbow that has already been surgically repaired once.
At 6’6” and 245 lbs, though, there is plenty of reason to be optimistic that a TJ at 23 years old will be a blip on the radar of a long career. Though he shares many qualities with his lefty White-Sox-to-Red-Sox predecessor, Chris Sale (6’6”, 180 lbs), a slight build isn’t one of them. His length and size make for effortless velocity on his pitches, and I would anticipate that if the Red Sox look to extend Crochet, that’s the thing making them comfortable doing so after the scarring experience with Sale. It won’t be without risk, but the fact the Red Sox were willing to include one of the Big 4 (and two of the Big 5) in the package likely signals their comfort with Crochet’s medicals moving forward and their desire to keep him around beyond his two remaining years of team control.
Highlights
If you’re anything like me, you’re now going to want to watch all the Crochet highlights you can get your hands on. Here’s all 209 (in under 150 IP!!) of Crochet’s strikeouts from last season. Enjoy!
