FORT MYERS, Fla. — Red Sox lefty Garrett Crochet had one of the nastiest, if not the nastiest, four-seam fastballs among MLB starters last year.
Opponents batted .198 with a .295 slugging percentage against it. He threw it 1,287 times (1,095 times to right-handed hitters) and allowed just 16 extra-base hits, 11 of which were doubles.
The pitch averaged 97.2 mph. He maintained elite velocity with it for the entire season. He topped out at 99.8 mph in his first start March 28. He reached back for 100.4 mph in his final start Sept. 27.
He hit 100 mph in three of his starts, all in September. He maxed out at 99.9 mph in three other starts.
But what else besides elite velocity makes his fastball so effective?
“To be honest, I don’t know because metrically it’s nothing crazy,” Crochet said Saturday at JetBlue Park.
“I think it’s having three different variations of fastballs (four-seam, cut fastball, sinker) that makes the four-seam pop a little bit more,” Crochet added. “Being teammates with Lance Lynn for a couple years and seeing how he navigated lineups being damn-near exclusively a fastball pitcher was something that always appealed to me. Since I kind of gained the velocity in college, that’s how I like to pitch.”
Crochet will make his 2025 Grapefruit League debut here Sunday for the Red Sox against the Blue Jays. First pitch is scheduled for 1:05 p.m.
Boston acquired the 25-year-old ace from the White Sox on Dec. 11. Boston sent two Baseball America Top 100 prospects — Kyle Teel and Braden Montgomery — and two other top 15 organizational prospects to Chicago.
Crochet debuted in 2020 as a reliever. MLB.com’s Sarah Langs noted that he threw 45 pitches of at least 100 mph in just six innings as a rookie in ‘20. Dodgers’ Brusdar Graterol (47 pitches of at least 100 mph in 22 1/3 innings) was the only pitcher during the shortened COVID season with more, Langs noted.
Crochet threw his four-seam fastball 53.7% of the time last year. His cutter is his second most used pitch. He also added in the sinker toward the end of the year. Rob Friedman (Pitching Ninja on X) tweeted a video of it Sept. 20, noting it was 99 mph with 19 inches of run. Friedman wrote, “Crochet’s new Sinker is gonna be a problem.”
Crochet, who’s 6-foot-6, also gets excellent extension down the mound, which makes his fastball even more difficult to hit.
He finished in the 93rd percentile among major league pitchers in extension (7.1) last year.
“It’s something I don’t think about,” Crochet said about his extension. “If I do think about it, then my mechanics getting down the mound change in a way that I feel like it takes away from my four-seam. Like back in ‘21, I was hunting ride (on the fastball) and that changed my mechanics a little bit. I feel like extension is very similar. I feel like when I’m just tall and fall (and use) that as my thought-process on the mound, everything just kind of lines up that way.”
As Crochet mentioned, he thinks pairing the four-seamer with two other variations of fastball has the ability to make it play up better.
He considers his cutter his second best pitch.
“Based on the numbers I know it’s not the cutter but I use the cutter like it’s my second best pitch,” Crochet said.
Opponents batted .268 but with a .236 expected batting average against his cutter last year.
“Occasionally I’m burned by the hook spinner down the left field line right over third base,” Crochet said. “But just my ability to throw it for strikes and command it and keep hitters off-balance with it.”
He gets a lot of swing-and-miss with the cutter. MLB.com’s David Adler wrote that Crochet “induced whiffs on a third of the swings against his cutter, and he collected 59 strikeouts on cutters — second only to cutter maestro Corbin Burnes among starting pitchers” last year.
Teams stacked lineups with mostly right-handed batters against the lefty last year. That’s when he incorporates his changeup, which opponents batted just .184 with a .189 expected batting average against. All 142 times he threw his changeup last year were to right-handed batters.
“Last year, I would go starts at a time seeing one lefty in the lineup, sometimes no lefties in the lineup,” Crochet said. “So on days like that, I like to incorporate the changeup. The changeup for me has never really been a dominant pitch. It’s kind of just to reopen the heater. For me, obviously moving to Fenway, it will probably play a more crucial role. But I don’t really put a lot of pressure on it. I throw it in my specific zone and then I go back to whatever I was doing before. It’s kind of just to change eye-levels and get to different quadrants that I don’t typically go with my heater.”
Meanwhile, he had an expected .139 batting average vs. his sweeper last year. It was his third most used pitch behind the four-seamer and cutter.
Crochet also led all majors leaguers in Fangraphs’ Stuff+ statistic (113). Per Fangraphs, “Stuff+ looks only at the physical characteristics of a pitch. Important features include, but are not limited to, release point, velocity, vertical and horizontal movement, and spin rate. A pitcher’s secondary pitches are defined based on their primary fastball — with ‘primary’ defined by usage in an outing — and so are judged by velocity and movement differentials along with raw velocity and movement numbers.”
Right behind him for Stuff+ were Hunter Greene (112), Corbin Burnes (112), Dylan Cease (111), Tarik Skubal (111) and Paul Skenes (110).
“It (stuff) is not a surefire way to get outs but it certainly helps,” he said. “Stuff, velocity and just competing in the strike zone are all important in their own right.”
The lefty made his MLB debut without pitching in a minor league game. The White Sox drafted him in the first round (11th overall) in 2020 out of Tennessee. He said he reported to their alternate site (where players not on the active roster trained during COVID) “striving” to make it the big leagues that year. His debut came Sept. 18 at Cincinnati in an empty Great American Ball Park.
“In ‘21 I feel like I truly debuted for the first time,” Crochet said. “‘20 just with no fans, it felt a lot like the live ABs I was doing at the alternate site. So it really wasn’t a big change that year. ‘21 I really had to adapt and learn on the fly.”
He and Red Sox righty Tanner Houck took similar paths. Both were first-rounders. Both battled injuries (Crochet had Tommy John surgery in April 2022). Both pitched out of the bullpen before becoming All-Star starters in their first full seasons in the rotation.
Their similar paths to the 2024 All-Star Game is not something they have discussed.
“He probably felt similar though in the thought process of ‘I have that avenue (relieving) open so when it comes to starting, I’m pitching like I have nothing to lose.’ Because at the very least I know that’s my floor — is being a big league reliever. So it’s just like, ‘I’m going to go out here and just pitch free of worry, free of expectations.’”
NUCLEAR ENGINEERING AND A BEAR TATTOO?
Crochet’s profile on the University of Tennessee website says he was majoring in nuclear engineering.
“I didn’t last too long in that field,” Crochet joked.
So what would he be doing now if he wasn’t playing baseball?
“I always kind of just joke, but it’s also not a joke, about that I’d just build houses or something,” Crochet said.
Does he know how to build houses?
“No, not in the slightest,” Crochet said.
Crochet also has a bear tattooed onto his arm.
“Literally zero relevance,” he said. “I just like bears. I think they’re cool.”
Crochet’s max fastball velocities in each 2024 start:
- March 28: 99.8 mph
- April 2: 91.1 mph
- April 7: 98.8 mph
- April 13: 97.8 mph
- April 19: 98.3 mph
- April 24: 99.2 mph
- April 29: 99.0 mph
- May 5: 99.2 mph
- May 10: 99.5 mph
- May 15: 98.5 mph
- May 21: 99.4 mph
- May 26: 98.5 mph
- June 1: 98.5 mph
- June 7: 98.7 mph
- June 13: 98.7 mph
- June 19: 98.9 mph
- June 24: 99.4 mph
- June 30: 99.0 mph
- July 6: 99.6 mph
- July 12: 98.1 mph
- July 23: 97.7 mph
- July 28: 99.9 mph
- Aug. 3: 99.9 mph
- Aug. 9: 97.6 mph
- Aug 16: 99.1 mph
- Aug. 21: 99.9 mph
- Sept. 1: 100.4 (also 100.2 mph FB)
- Sept. 7: 99.4 mph
- Sept. 13: 100.2 mph
- Sept. 20: 98.9 mph
- Sept. 27: 100.4 mph
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