Garrett Crochet rolled through the Yankees lineup last night in Boston's clutch AL Wild Card Series Game 1 win, but if you looked closely, you'd see that wasn't the only thing he rolled. The left-hander sports a tasteful tight cuff at the ankle of his uniform pants, a fashion choice that's extra noticeable on his distinctive straight-leg pitching delivery.
The sartorial statement is actually not new. According to an interview Crochet gave to the "Baseball Isn't Boring" podcast in July, the pegged pants date to his days playing for the Santa Barbara Foresters of the California Collegiate League the summer after his freshman year at the University of Tennessee in 2018.
"The pants that they gave me were made for an eighth grader," Crochet said. "So I just kind of tapered them myself by doing this kind of tight roll technique that I had learned from some buddies in college that would do it with their jeans.
"I just started doing it. I expected [head coach Tony] Vitello at Tennessee to tell me to kick rocks, but he didn't, so I just kept doing it."
Find pretty much any picture of Crochet pitching since then, through his college days and early MLB career with the White Sox, and sure enough, the pants are cuffed.
The style even rubbed off on teammates. Former Chicago teammate Joe Kelly -- no stranger to fashion statements of his own -- copped the look in 2022, though Crochet felt some responsibility when Kelly served up a homer with his pants pegged.
But it's sure working for Crochet. He turned in a Cy Young-caliber regular season, posting a 2.59 ERA and leading the AL with 255 strikeouts and 205 1/3 innings, before punching out 11 over seven stellar innings at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday. So don't expect any drastic dress departures anytime soon.
"I just feel really weird when my pants aren't like this," Crochet said.