BOSTON — A night that ended well for the Red Sox didn’t start that way for starter Garrett Crochet.
Facing the Los Angeles Dodgers, Crochet was ambushed for a solo homer by leadoff hitter Shohei Ohtani. That, in itself, wasn’t great cause for concern — Ohtani has 10 leadoff homers this year alone, and Crochet has twice previously been taken deep by the leadoff hitter this season.
But a handful of pitches later, Teoscar Hernandez homered, too, giving the Dodgers a 2-0 lead three batters in.
“I made two bad pitches,” Crochet would say with a shrug later. “I’ve been watching them on repeat, too. Fox has played them 30 times. You’d think the Dodgers won tonight. But, no real adjustment.
“The second one hurt. I went into the start telling (catcher Carlos Narvaez), ‘Let’s really establish the four-seam today.’ I got clipped on one, middle-middle, to the best hitter in the league (Ohtani)…big whoop. But then to give one up (to Hernandez) on the sweeper after not really establishing the ‘four’ yet, that’s one that I regret a little bit. But I was 15 pitches deep after the first. I still had a lot of game left, personally, and especially for the team.”
“Solo shots, we’ll take those,” said Alex Cora. “And then after that, he did an amazing job. He’s versatile enough that he can change his gameplan throughout the evening. It seemed like they were on the fastball early on. There were some loud outs, even in the second inning. But then after that, he settled down and gave us what we needed.”
Crochet had reason to dismiss the two homers — the Dodgers didn’t score again off him over the next five innings as the Red Sox earned a 4-2 victory. In fact, never mind scoring — the Dodgers only twice more had a baserunner in scoring position.
With the win, his 12th, tying him with Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta for the most in either league, Crochet lowered his ERA to 2.23, becoming only the third pitcher in franchise history to post a sub-2.25 ERA with 175 or more strikeouts in the first 22 games of any season. The others? Pedro Martinez (2000) and Chris Sale (2018).
Crochet enjoyed the playoff-like atmosphere at Fenway, and in particular, being matched up with Dodger legend Clayton Kershaw. In the past, Crochet has taken the familiar position that he doesn’t pitch against the opposing pitcher, but he acknowledged that it was hard to ignore against whom he was pitching.
“Him and (Chris) Sale, specifically (I followed when I was younger),” said Crochet. “Definitely watched him growing up, for sure. There are certain times where you do feel like you’re matching against the other pitcher, and unanimous Hall of Famer definitely. That’s the case. I just tried to reel it back in and make sure it was more (about) me and their nine hitters.”
In his first (and likely last) regular season start at Fenway, Kershaw couldn’t hold the lead for long. The Red Sox took the lead back quickly in the second with three runs and added another in the fifth as they chased him.
Meanwhile, Crochet found another gear. The four hits he yielded after the first were all singles. Twice, LA got a baserunner to third, but both times, Crochet dug in, twice fanning Ohtani to strand the runners: once in the second and again in the fourth.
He finished with 14th quality start of the season and his eighth straight winning decision, the longest for a Red Sox starter since Michael Wacha in 2022.
In front of a sellout crowd, Crochet drew on the Fenway energy.
“I think that we saw it when New York came to town as well,” he said. “Honestly, I feel like we’ve been seeing it the past month-plus. It seems like every weekend here it’s sold-out and very lively. It’s a great crowd to play in front of, to be sure.”
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