CLEVELAND – For the past month, the Boston Red Sox have had to deal with trying to win games without having Garrett Crochet in their starting rotation
They’re going to have to keep dealing with that reality for a little bit longer.
On Sunday, Red Sox manager Chad Tracy announced that Crochet had a setback in his return from left shoulder inflammation due to left lat tightness that had crept up in the past couple of days, since he threw a live bullpen last Tuesday.
He was initially scheduled to throw another live bullpen this Tuesday. Now he’s going to visit a doctor in the next 48 hours once the team returns to Boston following Sunday's series finale against the Guardians.
“I’m going to get some imaging on it just to confirm we got the full picture, but it feels like a very minor setback,” Crochet said in Progressive Field’s visiting dugout pregame Sunday. “It doesn’t even feel fair to call it a setback because I don’t think it deserves that title. I won’t be making the live bullpen on Tuesday and just trying to make sure that when I return to play, I’m there for the rest of the year.”
The team initially hoped the discomfort was due to soreness, but they realized it was more than that when it didn’t go away. He’s going to back off from any kind of throwing activity until he sees the doctor, but is still able to do isometric work pain-free.
“I still feel like I was a little ways off from a rehab start since it was very early in the build-up process,” Crochet said. “That’s a pretty vulnerable time for the arm in general, so if it was going to happen at some point, I would expect it to happen right around now, which sucks. Just strengthen the arm and move on.”
Crochet’s eventual return would be a huge boost for a Red Sox rotation that has been one of the team’s strengths. While Boston’s rotation has a 4.32 ERA this year as a whole, Connelly Early and Peyton Tolle both have ERAs under 2.65 this season, while Sonny Gray and Ranger Suarez have been consistent options.
While they’ve gotten great starting pitching through the first two games of their series against Cleveland (even if Brayan Bello’s strong outing technically came in relief), there’s a reason the Red Sox signed Crochet to a six-year, $170 million contract prior to last season.
“We’ve got to go out and win games, and we have guys in our rotation who have done a great job and are capable,” Tracy said. “We want him back, obviously. That’s disappointing, but in our mind we’ve just got to keep going.”
At the time of the injury, Crochet said he wasn’t too concerned and didn’t expect to be out for long. It’s been more than a month since that happened, and Sunday’s update makes any potential return date even murkier.
“Right now I’m just trying to get back to being the version of myself that I know I can be and the version of myself that was there before the injury,” Crochet said. “For me, it goes a little bit deeper than my shoulder and lat, I’m trying to use this time to get everything right just to be the best version of myself.”