Garrett Crochet’s Injury Adds to Boston’s Woes

They say that no news is good news. Google tells me that saying is attributed to James Howell, a 16th-century writer and politician, but I disagree. I attribute it to Sully and Murph, the two imaginary Red Sox fans whose lens I like to interpret Boston sports news through. I mean, COME ON. Last week, Sonny Gray hit the IL with a hamstring injury. Over the weekend, the Sox fired manager Alex Cora of his duties, along with a significant portion of his coaching staff. While the echoes of that momentous decision were still reverberating through the city, there’s now this: Boston placed staff ace Garrett Crochet on the 15-day IL with shoulder inflammation. Woof. The Sox can’t catch a break.

Crochet’s IL placement follows a frustrating start to his season. Through six starts, he’s had three spectacular outings and three clunkers. His last time out, he put together one of his best starts of the year: six innings, seven strikeouts, and no earned runs against the Orioles. But toward the end of that outing, his velocity dipped sharply. Despite sitting 95-96 mph in the early innings, he was down in the 91-93 range by the end of his start.

Crochet told Christopher Smith of MassLive that he felt some fatigue in his shoulder during that start, and that he doesn’t think this is a serious injury. “Was able to grind through (the fatigue) there at the end. It just makes more sense to get ahead of it now so I’m not playing catch-up the rest of the season,” he said.

Boston’s prognosis for the injury is similarly optimistic. Interim manager Chad Tracy stated that he expects a minimum-length IL stay for Crochet. “I think there’s confidence in that. But obviously don’t hold me to that,” he said. “We have to see how he responds. But I think everybody feels confident that that’s going to be the case.” There are plenty of hedging words in that statement, sure. But I think that just shows that Tracy is a rational actor. Pitcher injuries are notoriously tough to evaluate, and saying that Crochet would definitely return as soon as eligible just isn’t believable. That’s not how probability works.

Crochet’s durability was a frequent topic of conversation when the Red Sox traded for him after the 2024 season. After starting in college, he broke into the major leagues as a reliever, dealt with multiple serious injuries, and threw only 97 2/3 innings, across all levels, from 2020-2023. He broke out as a starter in 2024, but was largely shut down in the second half of the season, never exceeding four innings pitched after the All-Star break. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, he led the AL in innings pitched in 2025, with 205 1/3, the second most in the majors.

In that light, it’s reasonable to think of Crochet’s shoulder fatigue as just a consequence of last year’s huge workload. The Sox brought him along slowly this spring, and Crochet noted that his strength didn’t recover as much as he had hoped during his buildup to the regular season. That seems perfectly believable to me. The guy just carried the biggest workload of his life. It’s hardly a leap that his arm might recover more slowly.

Considering that, this IL stint might help manage Crochet’s workload somewhat. If his arm can only handle, say, 180 innings this year, or perhaps 25 starts, or whatever arbitrary unit you want to put on it, giving him extra rest early in the season to get the best out of him later on seems wise. But alas, things aren’t quite that simple. Baseball Prospectus’ Recovery Dashboard pins the average IL time for injuries initially diagnosed as shoulder inflammation at between one and two months, based on IL placements in this decade. Of the 48 pitchers who went on the IL with that designation in 2025 (excluding Lucas Erceg, who was placed on the IL with less than 15 days left in the season), only three returned after 15 days.

In other words, Crochet and Boston might be hoping for the best, but they should probably also be planning for the worst, or at least for a less-than-ideal outcome. Luckily for the Red Sox, their roster is well suited for just such an occasion. As I wrote in reviewing their offseason, chief baseball officer Craig Breslow prioritized pitching depth in his peripatetic winter of deals. The Red Sox rotation placed first in our Positional Power Rankings, and while Crochet was a big part of that, a bigger part is that the team went nine deep with big league caliber options.

That depth has already been severely tested. Crochet is the third starter from among our preseason projected Opening Day rotation to hit the IL, joining Gray and Johan Oviedo. Another two starters – Kutter Crawford and Patrick Sandoval – are still rehabbing from injuries suffered last year. Brayan Bello has an ERA above nine and a FIP approaching eight. Ranger Suarez, another big offseason acquisition, has double the WAR of everyone else who has started a game for the Sox this year.

But imagine how bad this could have been without Suarez. Imagine how bad it could have been if Payton Tolle and Connelly Early weren’t around to give the team a solid top three even with Crochet and Gray on the shelf. This is a great object lesson in the adage that you can never have too much pitching. Jake Bennett, acquired in an offseason prospect swap, is slated to start in Crochet’s rotation spot on Friday. He’s been spectacular in Triple-A to start the season – and he wasn’t even among the 10 names we listed on Boston’s depth chart entering the year. It’s hard to overstate how much depth the Red Sox have.

Replacing “Garrett Crochet” with “depth” is still a big downgrade, of course. You can talk all day about how well the Red Sox have insulated themselves from injury, but they’re still 12-19 and already eight games back in the division. They’ve had one of the worst rotations in baseball this year, and their ace is now on the IL. Their copious replacement options are a wonderful silver lining, but you can’t have silver linings without dark clouds.

Our playoff odds docked the Red Sox by two percentage points when Crochet went on the IL. But they’d already fallen by 26 percentage points since the preseason. In that sense, the more appropriate adage might be “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” It’s one thing to lose your ace, and quite another to lose your ace after playing so badly that you’ve already fired your manager and half your coaches.

Even the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. I’m positive that Breslow and company came into the season with some worries about Crochet’s health, but even if they had hired a fortune teller, “Crochet gets hurt after the rest of our rotation implodes, our offense falls apart, and we fire our manager in April” isn’t the kind of thing you can plan around.

It’s entirely possible that we’ll look back on this injury as the end of Boston’s season. When you fall this far behind in the standings and then lose your best player, the stories write themselves. It’s also entirely possible that he’ll return after the minimum IL stint and lead a charge to the playoffs. That’s what’s so great about sports; you don’t know what’s going to happen until it does. But while I’m certainly not afraid to point out front office decisions I don’t agree with, I don’t think you can fault Breslow’s process in this instance.

Before the year started, Boston was the major league team best situated to shrug off pitching injuries. But apparently, no one is this well situated, particularly when the rest of the team isn’t helping to pick up some of the slack. To close out this adage-filled article with one of a more recent vintage, you can’t predict baseball, Suzyn.