The Boston Red Sox will be without Garrett Crochet, the latest ding on an increasingly injured roster.
The Boston Red Sox entered the 2026 season with one of the best, and deepest, pitching staffs in all of baseball. Thanks to a string of injuries, that depth has all but evaporated, and now the hits keep coming.
Ahead of Wednesday afternoon's series finale in Toronto, the team announced that it has placed ace Garrett Crochet on the 15-day injured list with shoulder inflammation.
Crochet is coming off his best start of the season on Saturday in Baltimore, where he threw six shutout innings, allowing just three hits while striking out seven en route to the Red Sox' 17-1 beatdown of the Orioles.
It hasn't been the start to the season that anyone could have imagined for Crochet, who is just two starts removed from the worst start of his major league career, a 1.2 inning outing where he allowed 11 runs on nine hits against the Minnesota Twins. Overall, Crochet has a 6.30 ERA, thanks in part to a walks-per-nine of 3.3 and a hits per nine of 9.9, both representing pretty significant jumps from last year's numbers.
Crochet is coming off a 2025 season where he threw 205 innings, which was just 14 fewer than the 219 innings that he had thrown in his first four seasons combined with the Chicago White Sox. That alone was enough to raise some alarm bells for one National League executive who spoke with MLB.com's Mark Feinsand, "Crochet’s velocity is a concern and definitely something to monitor...people forget his MLB innings last year basically matched the prior three years combined, so it wouldn't be that surprising to see some fatigue this year."
The innings volume from Crochet is a real concern, per The Ringer's Brian Barrett. Of the six pitchers who led the league in innings pitched in 2024, only one, Giants starter Logan Webb, made it through the 2025 season completely healthy.
Despite his seeing minor dips in both velocity and stuff, both Crochet and the Red Sox have been insistent that he was healthy, which was the most important thing; his placement on the injured list marks a stark turn from that tenor.
The injury to Crochet comes at a brutal time for the Red Sox pitching staff, which has seen Sonny Gray and Johan Oviedo hit the injured list, as well as rehabbing starters Kutter Crawford and Patrick Sandoval suffer setbacks.
Boston announced that they have called up utility man Nate Eaton to take Crochet's spot on the roster. Eaton has spent the entirety of this season with Triple-A Worcester, where he is hitting .292 with an .831 OPS.
The Red Sox have yet to name a starter for Crochet's spot in the rotation, which was lined up for Friday's series opener against the Astros, but prospect Jake Bennett was scratched from his start on Tuesday night in Worcester, making him the likely candidate.
The Red Sox will look to take their second consecutive series on Wednesday afternoon. First pitch from Rogers Centre with the Blue Jays is set for 3:07 p.m. ET.
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