The Red Sox made one of the biggest splashes of last offseason, acquiring left-handed pitcher Garrett Crochet in a trade with the White Sox.
Boston paid a hefty price in prospects, including trading away catcher Kyle Teel, the No. 40 prospect in 2024 according to MLB Pipeline. But the Red Sox still might not have known they were getting a pitcher they could install at the top of the rotation and one who would contend for a Cy Young Award.
Crochet made a huge leap in productivity between 2024 and 2025, and even if he reached peak performance last season, Boston boasts one of the best pitchers in the game.
But what if Crochet has a next level on top of the next level he attained in 2025? Let’s look at a few ways the 26-year-old star could raise his game once more in 2026.
20 wins
OK, this isn’t the analytical achievement of some other milestones Crochet could reach. But there’s something about being a 20-game winner that just looks good on a résumé – and exemplifies greatness. It’s well within Crochet’s reach, too. He won 18 games last year and took five no-decisions in starts where he pitched at least six innings and allowed two or fewer runs. That includes a pair of outings in which he didn’t allow any runs. Crochet went 14-1 over his final 20 starts even while his ERA during that stretch, 2.90, was higher than his season mark of 2.59. If Crochet can turn a few of those hard-luck losses and no-decisions into wins, he’ll become just the fourth 20-game winner this decade and have a new entry for his growing résumé.
An ERA title
Crochet’s ERA through his first 13 starts was 1.98 – that’s because the only time he allowed more than two runs in an outing through June 1 was when he surrendered four runs in a loss to the Mariners on April 24. Over his final 20 starts, though, Crochet allowed at least five runs four times – twice in June and once each in August and September. If he had allowed 12 total earned runs in those starts instead of 22, his ERA falls from his season-ending 2.59 to 2.15 and Crochet takes the ERA title from Tigers ace Tarik Skubal. The outlier for Crochet’s season was the seven runs and four home runs he allowed on Sept. 2 to a Cleveland team that didn’t often show that kind of thump. Eliminating a small handful of rough outings puts Crochet right in the mix for the ERA crown.
An All-Star Game start
When last year’s All-Star Game happened on July 15, Crochet boasted a 10-4 record with a 2.23 ERA and 160 strikeouts in 129 1/3 innings. Skubal, meanwhile, was 10-3 with an identical 2.23 ERA and 153 strikeouts in 121 innings. Crochet could have been in line to make the start given to Skubal, but he opted to skip the game to manage what became by far his heaviest workload at any level of baseball. Crochet doesn’t need to do much different in the first half of 2026 to earn the All-Star Game start except perhaps more convincingly outpace Skubal, the reigning champion of baseball’s pitching accolades. A start in the Midsummer Classic would put Crochet in the same sentence as past Red Sox aces such as Chris Sale, Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens.
A Cy Young Award
With the razor-thin margin between him and Skubal, this is another accolade for which Crochet will likely have to create significant separation from the reigning two-time AL Cy Young winner. Even though Crochet’s 205 1/3 innings led the AL and his 255 strikeouts led all of baseball, Skubal earned 26 of 30 first-place votes, perhaps because he was the 2024 winner and Crochet didn’t do quite enough to remove the award from Skubal’s grasp. Crochet won eight of nine decisions after the All-Star break, but his handful of rough outings were likely the difference between winning the Cy Young and finishing second. With most other numbers comparable across the board, Skubal’s 2.18 second-half ERA, compared to Crochet’s 3.20, likely swung the award in the Detroit ace’s favor.
An October surge
Crochet certainly did his part in Boston’s AL Wild Card Series against the Yankees, He outdueled Max Fried and dominated Game 1 with 11 strikeouts, no walks and one run allowed in 7 1/3 innings as the Red Sox took the opener, 3-1. Boston’s other two starters in the series, Brayan Bello and Connelly Early, combined to pitch just six innings as the Yankees took the series in three games. Boston managed only three runs in the final two games, but the Red Sox upgraded their offense by trading for first baseman/designated hitter Willson Contreras, and boosted the rotation behind Crochet by acquiring Sonny Gray, Ranger Suárez and Johan Oviedo. That could give the Red Sox enough ammunition to make the deep postseason run that has eluded them since they reached the ALCS in 2021.