LAS VEGAS — Garrett Crochet’s first season with the Red Sox was a smashing success as the lefty led all of baseball in strikeouts and led the American League in innings pitched.
It was not, however, quite enough to carry him to the Cy Young Award. That honor went to another lefty, Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers, who captured the trophy for the second straight season.
Skubal became the first American League pitcher to win the award two years in a row since Pedro Martinez pulled off the feat in 1999 and 2000. He garnered 26 of 30 first-place votes to four for Crochet. In point totals, Skubal edged Crochet 198-132.
Crochet finished second on the remaining 26 ballots.
Houston’s Hunter Brown finished third overall while Red Sox reliever Aroldis Chapman finished seventh with four fifth-place votes, making him the top reliever on the ballot.
Crochet, acquired in a five-player trade from the Chicago White Sox last winter, was 18-5 with a 2.59 ERA in 32 starts. By contrast, Skubal was 13-6 with a 2.21 ERA in 31 starts. Crochet fanned 255 while Skubal racked up 241 strikeouts.
Crochet became just the third Red Sox player in history to record more than 250 strikeouts with an ERA below 2.75, joining Martinez (1999 and 2000) and Smoky Joe Wood (1912). He managed to throw at least five innings in all but one of his starts and threw six or more in 25 of them.
He had 10 or more strikeouts in eight starts, second only to Skubal’s 10 such outings.
His 22 quality starts led the American League and were the most for any Red Sox pitcher since Chris Sale had 23 in 2017.
Speaking at the general managers meetings in Las Vegas on Wednesday, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow heaped praise on Crochet for his debut season in Boston.
“He was phenomenal,” Breslow said. “There’s really no other way to categorize what he meant to our team this year. It’s what we had hoped he could be when we traded for him, but to see that actually materialize is great.
“It’s easy to forget that this was his second full season as a starting pitcher and that he pitched this season at 26 years old. There’s no reason to believe that there isn’t a step forward he can take. The way he took ownership of his season in terms of monitoring his workload and recovering and working incredibly hard to take the ball every five or six days and push deep into games was great.”
The last Red Sox pitcher to win the Cy Young Award was Rick Porcello in 2016.
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