Crochet’s Struggles Are Just the Start of Boston’s Problems

Led by American League Cy Young runner-up Garrett Crochet, free agent signee Ranger Suarez, and trade acquisition Sonny Gray, the Red Sox were projected to have the majors’ top rotation in our preseason Positional Power Rankings. Four weeks in, the unit has been one of the majors’ worst, with Crochet getting pummeled and Gray underperforming before landing on the injured list earlier this week with a right hamstring strain. The bullpen has been shaky, the offense weak, and after losing the first two games of a three-game series against the Yankees at Fenway Park, the Red Sox now sit 9-15, last in the AL East.

Through 24 games, this is the Red Sox’s worst start since 2020, when they went 6-18 en route to a 24-36 record and a last-place finish. In terms of full-season futility, in 2019 the Red Sox — defending champions at the time — started 9-15 before rallying to finish at 84-78, third in the division but outside the playoff picture. After winning 89 games last season and making their first postseason appearance since 2021, this year was supposed to be different, but since Opening Day, the team’s seasonal win projection has fallen from 85 to 80.5, the fourth-largest drop in the majors ahead of only the Mets (-7.1), Phillies (-5.7) and Royals (-4.5). Only those three teams have larger drops in their Playoff Odds:

The driver of Boston’s success was supposed to be the rotation, headed by Crochet. After making his first All-Star team with the White Sox in 2024, he emerged as a true ace last year, leading the majors in both innings (205.1) and strikeouts (255) while ranking second in the AL in strikeout rate (31.3%), xERA (2.88), FIP (2.89), and WAR (5.8) — behind Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal in all of those categories — and third in ERA (2.59).

While he spun six shutout innings against in Cincinnati on Opening Day, only one of Crochet’s four starts since then has been any good. He allowed five runs (four earned) in five innings in a loss in Houston on April 1, recovering from an ugly two-run first inning by putting up three zeroes, only to serve up a two-out, two-strike three-run homer to Carlos Correa in the fifth. He rebounded with a 6.1-inning, two-run effort against the Brewers on April 7, but followed with the worst start of his career, and perhaps the worst start in franchise history. On April 13 at Target Field, the Twins roughed up Crochet for 11 runs (10 earned) in 1.2 innings; he allowed nine hits, including two homers, walked three, and didn’t strike anyone out. It was the first time a Red Sox starter had ever allowed at least 10 runs while failing to complete two innings.

“My command, as a whole, has been spotty,” Crochet said after that start. “I’ve gotten away with it… but tonight, they made me pay. It was weak contact, hard contact, walks, hit by pitch — a little bit of everything.”

Crochet hoped to straighten things out against the Tigers, but while he held them to one run over the first 4.2 innings on Sunday at Fenway Park, he yielded a pair of two-out homers in the fifth, a solo shot by Jahmai Jones, and then a three-run homer by Dillon Dingler, who had hit an RBI double off him in the first.

“I felt like I was just dominating until I wasn’t,” Crochet said afterwards. “It sucks that that’s the best I’ve felt all year… Just inconsistent. It happened in the first inning also, two quick outs then lost the zone a little bit and shied away from contact [and gave up a run].”

On the subject of dominating until he wasn’t, last season Crochet’s .217 wOBA allowed while facing lineups for a third time was the second lowest among any starter with at least 100 batters faced in that context; Nathan Eovaldi was first at .205, albeit with just 110 batters faced compared to 229 for Crochet. This year, Crochet’s .660 wOBA allowed (against 26 batters) the third time through is the majors’ highest among starters who have faced more than one batter in that context. He’s also struggled the first time through the order. Here’s a comparison of his three seasons as a starter:

Ouch. Overall, Crochet has a 7.88 ERA, a 5.48 xERA, and a 4.98 FIP, while allowing 1.88 homers per nine in 24 innings. Small sample caveats apply all over the place, but nothing has moved in the right direction; contact-wise, his average exit velocity is up nearly two miles per hour (from 87.7 mph to 89.6), his barrel rate is up nearly four points (from 7.3% to 11%), and his hard-hit rate is up over six points (from 37.3% to 43.8%). Batters are swinging and missing less often (10.7% swinging strike rate, down from 13.7%), and his strikeout rate has dropped (from 31.3% to 25.6%) while his walk rate has risen (from 5.7% to 7.8%).

Crochet’s average four-seam fastball velocity is down 0.5 mph, and he’s reduced his use of the pitch in favor of his sinker. But even more noticeable is his change in arm angle, which was as high as 56 degrees in 2021, when he was a full-time reliever. It’s dropped from an average of 35 degrees last year to 31, and while it’s cost him less than an inch of movement in any plane with regards to any of his offerings, I wonder if it’s cost him deception as well. Our two pitch modeling systems see declines in both his stuff and command/location, with the latter measures slipping below average (50 on the 20-80 scouting scale PitchingBot uses, and 100 on the index scale Stuff+ uses):

Crochet has lost roughly six percentage points in his whiff rates on his four-seamer and cutter, his two most frequently-used pitches, and over 16 points on that of his sweeper:

Last year, Crochet’s sweeper rated as his top putaway pitch, defined by Statcast as the strikeout rate when throwing that pitch in a two-strike count.; his four-seamer was his second-most effective pitch in that capacity. Both have been less effective towards that end this year, and while his improved putaway rates on other pitches have helped compensate, those offering have been less effective in general.

Crochet’s decline is hardly the extent of Boston’s woes, even within the rotation. A day after his start, Gray felt his right hamstring grab while throwing a pitch to Gleyber Torres in the third inning of the team’s Patriots’ Day morning game; his departure placed an extra burden on the bullpen ahead of their series with the Yankees, though the Red Sox rallied to beat the Tigers, 8-6.

This is Gray’s fourth trip to the IL since the start of 2022 due to a right hamstring strain. Fortunately in the other three (two in 2022, one in ’24), he averaged just 17 days on the sidelines, and this sounds similar. “I threw that last 3-2 pitch, and I felt a grab in my right hamstring,” Gray said afterwards. “It’s something that I have felt before. In the moment, I kind of knew what it was. I knew I needed to at least throw a warm-up pitch before I felt comfortable continuing.”

Though obviously the circumstances were beyond Gray’s control, it was the third time in five starts that he failed to go more than four innings. Through 23 innings, he’s carrying a 4.30 ERA, a 4.49 FIP, and a 5.60 xERA, numbers driven by an 11.3% barrel rate and a strikeout rate that’s plummeted from 26.7% to 13.1%. In contrast to Crochet, his arm angle, velocity, and stuff have hardly changed relative to last year, though he’s nearly doubled his cutter usage (from 12.6% to 23.3%) at the expense of his other pitches. Batters are hitting and slugging just .261 against the pitch while producing groundballs on 54.5% of those put in play; his overall groundball rate has spiked nearly 10 points, from 43.9% to 53.8%.

While Gray is out, all signs point to 23-year-old lefty Payton Tolle, a 55-FV prospect (no. 18 on our preseason Top 100), filling in. Tolle made three starts and four relief appearances for the 2025 Red Sox while putting up a 6.06 ERA and 6.26 FIP. Listed at 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds, he’s got a monster four-seam fastball that sits 93–97 mph and can touch 101, but his secondary pitches are a work in progress. Last year with Boston, his fastball averaged 96 mph as a starter and 97.5 out of the bullpen.

Hopefully he can provide length within a rotation that’s averaged fewer than five innings per start (4.90, 22nd in the majors) and that’s been less than effective in the aggregate. The unit’s 4.63 FIP is the majors’ sixth worst, its 5.05 ERA fifth worse, and its 5.67 xERA third worst. Suarez (4.00 ERA, 4.07 FIP in 27 innings over five starts) and 24-year-old lefty Connelly Early (2.88 ERA and 4.18 FIP in 25 innings over five starts) have been the most effective starters thus far, while 27-year-old righty Brayan Bello (6.75 ERA, 5.77 FIP in 18.2 innings over four starts) has struggled almost as badly as Crochet.

Early, a 50-FV prospect who ranked 38th in our Top 100, made four starts for Boston last September before being pressed into duty as the starter for the Wild Card Series elimination game against the Yankees in the wake of Lucas Giolito’s season-ending elbow issues. He didn’t escape the fourth inning that night but fared somewhat better in a rematch at Fenway Park on Tuesday. For five innings he pitched well, holding the Yankee to four hits and just one run — a towering Giancarlo Stanton solo homer — while striking out three without a walk (he did hit Ben Rice with a pitch). The sixth inning, his third time through the order, was another story. He walked Amed Rosario on four pitches, then Aaron Judge on seven pitches, and while he recovered to strike out Rice, Stanton ripped a two-run double to center and then Cody Bellinger walked before manager Alex Cora pulled the plug.

During that inning, the YES Network broadcast highlighted an alarming but telling split: In games where their starter has pitched at least six innings, the Red Sox are 8-0, but in anything shorter, they’re now 1-15, with Gray’s abbreviated start the only one they’ve won. League-wide, teams are 168-79 (a .680 winning percentage) when a starter goes six, and 200-289 (.409) when falling short.

Suarez continued the trend on Wednesday. He entered while riding a streak of 14 straight scoreless innings over his last two outings, but didn’t reach 15, as Rosario mashed a three-run homer off him in the first, then added a sacrifice fly in the third. Suarez departed before completing five innings for the third time in five starts, having allowed four runs in each.

The short starts have taxed a bullpen that was supposed to be among the best (fifth in our Positional Power Rankings) but has instead been rather shaky. Closer Aroldis Chapman and top setup man Garrett Whitlock have been fine, but their other higher-leverage righties, Greg Weissert and Zack Kelly, have scuffled. The unit’s 3.56 ERA ranks a respectable 10th in the majors, but they’re 24th in FIP (4.60) and WAR (-0.1), 25th in home run rate (1.35 per nine), and 24th in xERA (4.60). Regarding that last stat, in very small samples somehow nine of the 13 relievers they’ve used have double-digit barrel rates, with Chapman, Weissert and Whitlock all at 13.6% or above. While they strike out enough hitters to help offset that, not all of Boston’s other relievers do.

If the pitching has been pretty bad, the offense has been even worse, and probably worthy of a separate article. For now it will suffice to say that that the team is hitting a combined .226/.310/.333, ranking dead last in the majors in slugging percentage — how does a team playing in Fenway Park even do that? — and 28th in wRC+ (81). Just three regulars have a wRC+ of 100 or better, namely Willson Contreras (137), Wilyer Abreu (116), and Ceddanne Rafaela (103), as do part-timers Masataka Yoshida (137) and Connor Wong (119). Roman Anthony has been close to average (97 wRC+) but everybody else, including Jarren Duran and the rest of the infield (Trevor Story, Marcelo Mayer, Caleb Durbin and assorted fill-ins) has a wRC+ of 67 or lower. Duran, Durbin, Mayer, and Story all have batting averages below .200, and only Abreu, Contreras, and Wong have slugging percentages above .400.

In light of those struggles, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow’s major roster construction decisions — trading Rafael Devers last year, letting Alex Bregman depart as a free agent and replacing him with the much less powerful Durbin, holding onto the glut of outfielders instead of using the surplus to upgrade the lineup elsewhere — don’t look any better. But starting pitching was supposed to be this team’s strength, and instead it’s just another reason the Red Sox are running last.