The Boston Red Sox made arguably the biggest trade of the offseason, acquiring Garrett Crochet in a blockbuster deal with the Chicago White Sox. Crochet gives the Red Sox the ace they desperately needed, and he has shown exactly why the team acquired him thus far in spring training.
Through his three appearances, Crochet has kept the opposition off the board in 6.1 innings of work while striking out a whopping 14 batters. Yes, 14 of the 19 outs he has recorded have been via strikeouts. He just delivered three scoreless innings with seven strikeouts against the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday in his latest dominant outing.
Garrett Crochet struck out SEVEN batters across three scoreless innings of work 🐷 #SpringTraining pic.twitter.com/3mh6YkWyjl
— MLB (@MLB) March 5, 2025
Sure, it's only spring training, but we saw how dominant Crochet could be last season. Despite pitching for the worst team in modern MLB history, Crochet posted a 3.58 ERA in 32 starts and 146 innings in his first year as a starter. Crochet wound up fanning 209 batters, proving to be one of the elite strikeout artists in the American League.
Crochet's dominant start to his Red Sox career should have Red Sox fans clamoring for Craig Breslow and Co. to get an extension done while they still can.
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Red Sox should consider giving Garrett Crochet massive extension ASAP
Part of what made this trade such a slam dunk for the Red Sox was Crochet's contract situation. The 25-year-old is set to make just $3.8 million this season, and has another year of arbitration before hitting free agency following the 2026 campaign. This means that the Red Sox have two incredibly cheap years of a pitcher who could easily be a perennial Cy Young contender if he can stay healthy.
While that's great, the Red Sox could end up losing him after just two seasons, which, if he comes close to meeting expectations, would be a disaster. Crochet is the kind of arm the Red Sox should be attempting to build around, even if he costs a lot of money.
Now is the best time to get a deal done with Crochet. Yes, he was excellent in 2024, but that was his first season as a starter. He has not yet established himself as a bona fide ace after just one year of that production, so the Red Sox might get him at a discounted rate. Sure, there's injury risk, but if we're being real, every pitcher has injury risk nowadays.
Lucas Giolito, for example, made at least 29 starts in each of his previous four full seasons (excluding 2020) before signing with the Red Sox last offseason and suffering a season-ending elbow injury in spring training.
Crochet already was a guy the Red Sox should have wanted to extend before spring training based on what we saw last season. Given the fact that he has only looked better in a Red Sox uniform, getting a deal done should be Breslow's top priority, especially if Crochet is open to such a deal.