Garrett Crochet Makes Good on ‘Arrogant’ Prediction as Red Sox Take Game 1 From Yankees

NEW YORK – One day before taking the mound at Yankee Stadium for the most important game of his life, Garrett Crochet sat in the visitor’s dugout with Alex Cora. A few members of the front office were out in the bullpen, and Cora told his ace that it’d be fun to give them a call.

“Tomorrow you are going to make one call to the bullpen,” Crochet said. “Maybe two,” the manager responded.

But the 26-year-old lefty was adamant. One pitching change, with Aroldis Chapman closing things out, was all it would take for the Red Sox to beat the Yankees in Game 1 of the best-of-three AL Wild Card Series.

So, naturally, that’s exactly what happened. Crochet dominated the best offense in baseball across 7 2/3 innings. He allowed one run, four hits, no walks, and struck out 11 before he was finally pulled after 117 pitches, the most he’d ever thrown in the majors. Cora called on Chapman, who secured a four-out save and a 3-1 Boston win.

So what was behind that prediction? “Just being arrogant, to be honest,” Crochet said. “I didn’t actually expect that to be the case.”

Maybe it would’ve been too much for him to think that’s how it all would play out, but such an outing is exactly what the Red Sox were hoping for last December, when they traded four prospects to get Crochet from the White Sox, and then signed him to a six-year, $170 million extension that begins next season. At first, though, it looked like things would get away from him.

Paul Goldschmidt and Aaron Judge led off the bottom of the first inning with back-to-back singles before Crochet struck out Cody Bellinger on four pitches and then got Giancarlo Stanton to ground into an inning-ending double play. After two quick outs in the second inning, he left a 1-2 sinker up and out over the plate to Anthony Volpe, who smacked it over the wall in right field to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead. That made it three hits and seven batters faced. It looked like his confidence from the day before might’ve been a bit premature. Then he retired the next 17 batters that he faced.

Meanwhile, the Yankees had their own prized southpaw on the mound, and he was also dealing. Max Fried, who signed an eight-year, $218 million deal with the Yankees shortly before the Red Sox traded for Crochet, was flummoxing the Boston batters with a heavy dose of curveballs and changeups, and keeping them off his junk with a combination of cutters and four-seamers.

The two lefty starters offered an exhibit in contrast. Fried is lanky, and he stoops slightly as he stands on the rubber; his motions are narrow and under control. Crochet’s windup is jerky and violent. He spreads his broad shoulders wide and whips them around his torso as he straightens his oak-like right leg and kicks it out to the side as if he were performing at Radio City Music Hall. Whereas Fried was all about precision, Crochet overpowered the Yankees with the upper-90s velocity of his four-seamer and sinker, and induced some ugly swings from right-handed hitters on devastating low-and-inside cutters and sweepers.

And while Crochet’s trouble came quickly and then disappeared, Fried cruised through the first few innings and then pitched into and out of trouble for the rest of the night.

He walked Carlos Narváez with two outs in the fourth inning on a borderline pitch up and away. Nate Eaton then flubbed a 2-2 fastball over Goldschmidt’s head into shallow right field for a double. Judge raced over, picked up the ball against the wall in foul territory, and got it back in quick enough to hold Narváez at third. Fried fell behind Jarren Duran 3-0, got two called strikes with cutters, and then, with Narváez leading nearly halfway down the third base line, delivered a high sweeper. Duran swung and missed for strike three.

In the fifth, Fried once again issued a two-out walk, this time to Rob Refsnyder. He got ahead of Trevor Story, 0-2, the second strike a majestic curve. Fried went back to the curve again, this time low and away; Story fished it out and grounded it into the six hole. Volpe ranged to his right and backhanded it, but had no play. That brought up Alex Bregman, playing in his 100th career postseason game. He grounded out to third base for the final out.

In the sixth inning, Narváez went down 0-2, then took a slider in the dirt and spit on a curveball just off the plate away to even the count. He fouled off a high cutter before Fried went back to the curve. It was a beautiful swoosh that clipped the high-outside corner, except umpire Junior Valentine called it a ball. Narváez continued to fight, fouling off a sinker and a four-seamer, and Fried’s pitch count continued to climb. The ninth pitch of the plate appearance was a cutter that stayed away for ball four.

Now at 93 pitches, Fried threw a first-pitch strike to Eaton and then three straight balls, the first of them prompting manager Aaron Boone to get Luke Weaver up in the bullpen. The dilemma for Boone here was that Duran, the only lefty in the Boston lineup, was due up next. He needed Fried to get through Duran before going to the right-handed Weaver.

Eaton fouled off a 3-1 cutter on the outside corner. Fried then challenged him with a cutter down the middle; Eaton served it to second baseman Amed Rosario, who stepped on the bag and fired to first for the double play.

In the dugout after the inning, Boone told Fried that he would have one more batter, the lefty Duran, who grounded out to first to begin the seventh. At 102 pitches, Fried’s night was done, though he said after the game he felt like he could have kept going.

Because of what happened next, a lot is going to be made of Boone’s decision to pull Fried after 6 1/3 scoreless innings with the bases empty, the bottom of the order due up, and the Yankees leading by a run. But it was understandable. Unlike Crochet, who was getting better as the night wore on, Fried had labored through the middle innings and was showing signs of fatigue. His command was slipping, and hitters were fouling off some pitches that they’d swung through earlier in the game. Even if Boone had stuck with Fried, he wasn’t going to last much longer. At some point, the Yankees would have to turn to their suspect bullpen.

No, the bigger problem was Boone’s decision to bring in Weaver, specifically, when he did. The righty-hitting Ceddanne Rafaela was much better against right-handed pitchers this season than lefties, and Weaver was a reverse-splits guy too. The Red Sox center fielder was also 2-for-6 with two home runs in his career against Weaver. Small sample size, sure, but it wasn’t an ideal matchup.

Weaver jumped ahead in the count, 0-2, before Rafaela hunkered down. He fouled off one pitch after another while taking the occasional ball, until he finally walked on the 11th pitch of the plate appearance. Next up was Nick Sogard, the pesky second baseman and no. 9 hitter. He sent a 1-1 changeup into shallow right center and stretched it into a double, taking advantage of Judge’s compromised throwing arm due to an elbow injury that sent him to the injured list and limited him to DH-only duty for part of the summer. Sogard’s hustle gave the Red Sox two runners in scoring position for pinch-hitter Masataka Yoshida, who laced the first pitch he saw into center field for a go-ahead two-run single. Fernando Cruz relieved Weaver and escaped the jam, and then Devin Williams took care of the eighth.

“Gets ahead 0-2 with Rafaela there and lost the strike zone,” Boone said of Weaver. “Placed a couple hits on him where, you know, maybe just a little up with a couple of the pitches more than he wanted. But, you know, getting ahead 0-2 to Rafaela and losing him, that’s the one that stinks a little bit.”

After having thrown 100 pitches through seven innings, Crochet emerged from the dugout and climbed the mound to pitch the eighth. He struck out Trent Grisham swinging, and then Volpe stepped in and singled to end Crochet’s string of 17 straight outs. Cora made that phone call to the bullpen to get Chapman and Garrett Whitlock warm as Crochet faced the next batter, Austin Wells. As Volpe danced off first, Crochet fired a 2-2 heater toward Wells’ head that knocked the catcher off the plate. Narváez called time and jogged to the mound to calm Crochet down. When play resumed, he reared back and unleashed his hardest pitch of the night, a 100.2-mph heater to freeze Wells for strike three. Chapman came in and, after balking Volpe to second because he made three pickoff attempts, got José Caballero to fly out.

Story singled off David Bednar with two outs in the ninth and stole second before Bregman doubled him home. That insurance run proved to be crucial because the Yankees led off the bottom of the ninth with three straight singles — Goldschmidt, Judge, and Bellinger — to load the bases with nobody out. If it had still been a one-run game, Boone could have pinch-run for Goldschmidt, who represented the tying run at third, with Jasson Domínguez. And then, after Stanton struck out, Domínguez might’ve tagged up and scored when Jazz Chisholm Jr. lifted a fly ball to right field. Instead, Goldschmidt stayed put, not wanting to risk making the final out at the plate. It was Grisham who made the last out, a strikeout — his fourth of the game.

In the short history of the best-of-three Wild Card Series, no team has advanced after losing the first game. When asked about that after the game, Boone said, “We are going to show up tomorrow, and I expect us to do pretty well.” The Yankees hope he’s as good at making predictions as Crochet turned out to be.