1 strike from escaping jam, Crochet beaten by 3-run Correa clout

HOUSTON – As accomplished as he has been as a Red Sox starter, Garrett Crochet has been far from dominant at Daikin Park.

The Astros got to Crochet again Wednesday afternoon, sweeping a three-game series and saddling Boston with a 6-4 loss, its fifth consecutive defeat. Crochet, who entered the game with a 17-inning scoreless streak dating to last September, surrendered five runs (four earned) on six hits in five innings.

“It’s embarrassing,” said the 26-year-old left-hander. “Typically in the past, I’ve played that stopper role, and today I just let the guys down, especially when we scratched one [run across] early in the first. For me to give it right back and then ultimately give them the lead in the bottom of the first – it’s unacceptable.”

That 1-0 edge after half an inning marked Boston’s first and only lead in the series. Yordan Alvarez and Isaac Paredes hit one-out first-inning doubles to get Crochet’s day off to a tough start, and an error by shortstop Trevor Story preceded a Christian Walker single that scored Paredes and put the Astros up 2-1.

The big blow against Crochet came in the fifth when Carlos Correa broke a 2-2 tie with a two-out three-run homer to left field. Crochet had surrendered a one-out single to Jose Altuve before hitting Alvarez. After whiffing Isaac Paredes on an 83.2 mph sweeper, Crochet was one strike away from getting out of the inning. But Correa, after missing on a couple cutters, connected on the 1-2 83.1 mph sweeper Crochet served him.

“Didn’t have my best stuff, but I was making do until I wasn’t,” Crochet said. “Got Correa on the sweeper on his first at-bat, and he just seemed to be keyed in there late. Feel like the whole outing really boiled down to two bad pitches for me. It was the hung sweeper to Yordan in his first at-bat and the sweeper that kind of rolled in there to Correa at the end. It was supposed to be under and just never got through.”

Crochet’s shortest outing of his 2025 Cy Young runner-up season came on Aug. 11 at Daikin Park, where in four innings he gave up five runs on seven hits in an Astros win. He threw 93 pitches (63 strikes) in Wednesday’s outing, striking out seven, walking none and hitting two batters.

Crochet noted how the Astros seek out fastballs and made him pay last year on his four-seamer and cutter.

“They’re a smart team,” he said. “There’s a lot of veterans throughout that lineup. Today I felt like I held my own with the cutter. Gave up some hits on it, but they weren’t really touched up too bad. Felt like I made an adjustment midgame, and then that last inning, I felt like I went back to my strengths. And it worked for Paredes, and it didn’t work for Correa. It’s a game of adjustments, and I felt like there at the end, [Correa] was just one step ahead.”

The Red Sox struck out 13 times Wednesday, including three straight times in the ninth after Roman Anthony led off the inning with a pinch-hit homer off Astros closer Bryan Abreu to get Boston within two runs. Acknowledging “this whole week wasn’t great,” Boston manager Alex Cora wasn’t so much concerned with his players’ chase rate as with how they have been beaten inside the strike zone lately.

As Cora noted, however, this latest loss in a string came early in the season. Friday brings Boston’s home opener against the Padres, the start of a six-game homestand.

“Look at the whole picture. That’s the way you come out of stuff like this,” Cora said. “Just win series, right? We’ve got the Padres; we’ve got the Brewers. Win those two series at home and then go on the road and do the same thing. It’s April 1, right? Win 17 games this month, and you’re gonna be OK.”