Garrett Crochet took the mound for the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday for the first time in 10 days, and he didn’t miss a beat. The lefty pitched seven innings, allowing two runs and striking out eight.
Against a lineup loaded with right-handed hitters, Crochet spotted his fastball high and on the arm side, his cutter in the zone for strikes and his sweeper low and on the glove side to put hitters away.
The sweeper was particularly effective, generating seven whiffs against righties on 19 pitches. The Red Sox lefty used the pitch 22% of the time against righties, up from his season average. It wasn’t necessarily the plan entering the game, but Crochet executed it well early and stuck with it.
“I spammed the sweeper pretty heavy, but if it’s not broke don’t fix it kind of thing, so I just kinda kept riding it,” Crochet said.
Crochet capped off the outing by striking out Luke Maile with a runner on second to end the seventh inning. He let out a scream to match the energy in the ballpark as he stormed back to the dugout to finish the outing. He knew it was the final batter he would face with his pitch count over 100 and a reliever warming.
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“I just didn’t want to give up the lead again. You know, I had already given up one that inning, so it shortened the lead pretty quickly. For me, I wanted that strikeout pretty bad,” Crochet said.
You couldn’t blame Crochet for having the American League Cy Young award in the back of his mind. He’s in a tight race with Tarik Skubal, in which one poor outing by either of the pitchers could tip the scales one way or the other. The Red Sox lefty is more focused on the team goal, rather than individual accolades.
“Winning, just in the clubhouse, is very contagious. I think in our city right now, it’s very contagious. I just wanted to do everything I could to extend that,” Crochet said.
The Fenway Park crowd was loud on Tuesday night. Winning really is contagious.
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