The Red Sox opted to skip Garrett Crochet for his turn in the rotation last week. The extra rest certainly looked like it helped when the ace took the mound on Tuesday night against the Royals.
Despite allowing a run in the fourth inning and one more in the seventh, Crochet powered up to record his final two outs of the night via strikeout. That left him with eight strikeouts in the outing — a modest total by his standards, but impressive when considering that the Royals have the second-fewest strikeouts in Major League Baseball.
Those strikeouts also lifted Crochet into the MLB lead for strikeouts this season with 183, one more than Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler and two more than Detroit’s Tarik Skubal.
The Red Sox, perhaps drawing some inspiration from Crochet’s emotional exit from the mound following that inning-ending strikeout, plated three runs in the bottom of the seventh en route to a 6-2 victory, ensuring their fourth consecutive series win. Crochet improved to 13-4, though the two earned runs over seven innings ticked up his ERA ever so slightly from 2.23 to 2.24.
Beyond that, though, the 6-foot-6 lefty continued to make his mark in Red Sox history.
As noted by StatsCentre, Crochet currently has the sixth-best strikeouts-per-nine rate in Red Sox franchise history with a minimum of 145 innings pitched, trailing only Chris Sale (2018, 2019, 2017) and Pedro Martinez (1999, 2000, 2002).
Crochet joined a list with two other Red Sox legends, too. WEEI pregame and postgame host Joe Weil pointed out on X that Crochet has gone 9-0 with a 2.45 ERA and 94 strikeouts over his past 11 starts. Only two other pitchers in Red Sox history have delivered the same results in 11 starts: Martinez and Roger Clemens.
(Last month, after pitching a complete-game shutout with zero walks, Crochet joined another short list of Red Sox pitchers who had done the same since 1990: Curt Schilling, Martinez and Clemens.)
Obviously, Crochet still has plenty of time to continue this Cy Young-caliber season, and manager Alex Cora said postgame that he doesn’t anticipate any more planned skipped starts for the ace of his staff.
And for as much as Crochet’s season has placed the pitcher in rarefied air with some of the true pitching greats in franchise history, Cora shared that he is viewing Crochet’s season in comparison with last year, when the lefty was toiling for a White Sox team that was arguably the worst team in the modern era. Now, Crochet is pitching in front of a sold-out crowd at Fenway Park, with the Red Sox making a real run to the postseason.
“I think the fans kind of understood where we were. They stood up, and the two-strike clap, and they got very loud,” Cora said of Crochet’s final strikeout on Tuesday. “I mean, shoot, think about his season last year. As a team and for him, right, it was kind of like up and down. [He had an] innings limit and all that stuff. And now, this is what he wanted to do, just pitch. And we’re gonna let him do that.”
Of that final punchout, Crochet said he “just wanted that strikeout pretty bad” and also spoke about how much he’s enjoyed pitching inside a raucous Fenway atmosphere.
“Yeah, it’s a fun atmosphere right now,” Crochet said. “I can only imagine what it’s going to be in a couple months, but, you know, that’s why we’ve got to keep working. We’ve still got, I don’t even know how many games left — 45 or 50 or something like that. But yeah, it feels really good playing here in Boston.
