After a rough start to the season, Boston Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet bounced back in a big way in Saturday afternoon's win.
The Boston Red Sox came into Saturday afternoon's game in Baltimore having lost four straight, seven of their last 10, and were tied for the worst record in the American League at 9-17. In desperate need of someone to stop the bleeding, the 2025 Cy Young Award runner-up, Garrett Crochet, stepped up when his team needed him most.
Crochet entered his sixth start of the season under a microscope after allowing 15 earned runs in his previous two starts. After telling reporters after his last outing, a loss to the Detroit Tigers, that he felt like he was on the right track, Crochet returned to form in the Red Sox' 17-1 win over the Orioles.
Crochet came out of the gates firing, retiring the first seven batters he faced before surrendering his first hit of the game, a double off the bat of Orioles third baseman Coby Mayo. "He set the tempo from the mound," Red Sox manager Alex Cora said after the game.
One of the major points of emphasis for the 26-year-old lefty was maintaining count leverage over hitters, citing Detroit batters taking advantage when they got ahead in the count in his last start. Of the 22 first pitches Crochet threw in Saturday's start, 12 of them were for strikes.
Overall, it was six shutout innings for Crochet, who allowed just three hits while striking out seven in the bounce-back outing. When asked by a reporter if the outing was a sigh of relief for him, Crochet said, "Like you wouldn't believe...especially versus a divisional opponent, very potent lineup too, following last night's game too, to be able to go shut down inning multiple times, that felt really good," he said.
Crochet made a pretty substantial change to his pitch usage. Coming into Saturday's start, Crochet had used his four-seam fastball, cutter, and sinker nearly evenly. But against Baltimore, he relied heavily on the four-seam in his 90-pitch outing, throwing it 53 times, or 59% of his pitches, a 31% increase from his previous five starts.
"A lot of four seamers today, a lot of fastballs, beat them to the spot, used the cutter when he needed it," Cora said of Crochet's plan of attack. "He's trending in the right direction...it feels like the stuff is there, and hopefully we can take off," he continued.
"We've been trying to, lowkey searching for the past three starts now, what is it that I need to do to game plan for teams, and Connor [Wong] went into today with no one has hit your four all season, so we're just going to throw it until they did, and that worked out pretty well for us" Crochet said of his gameplan.
When asked if that allowed him to simplify things, Crochet was emphatic in his answer, "Very much so, feel like in the past I've talked a lot about being a pitcher or a thrower, and I'm more of a thrower, and that made it pretty easy".
The Red Sox will look to parlay the momentum from Crochet's start into a series win over the Orioles on Sunday afternoon in the series finale in Baltimore. Connelly Early will get the start for the Sox opposite Kyle Bradish. First pitch from Camden Yards set for 1:35 p.m. ET.
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