Crochet Traded to the Red Sox
The Red Sox spent years cultivating one of baseball's most promising young and exciting position player groups. It was a painful and frustrating process. They also possess a large stable of middle, back-end, and depth rotation pieces. Heading into the winter, with $63M in payroll space below the first luxury tax threshold, and two of the game's top pitchers over the past four years available, the simplest and most logical path forward was to invest in one of them while preserving the rest of the foundation.
The Red Sox missed out on their apparent top target and best fit, Max Fried, who the Yankees bullied away last night. Less than a day later, Breslow traded a package of prospects for Garrett Crochet -- a player the Red Sox had only begun pursuing aggressively hours earlier.
Trading for Crochet never felt good to me. It would require a haul, and then with him needing a new contract soon, it felt like such an unnecessary 1-2 punch given the other paths available.
However, the package heading out is less than I expected. Maybe that’s worrisome, since it always seems like the perceived overpays never really work out that way.
It was a bummer seeing Braden Montgomery’s name included in one of the later news reports, everyone talked Big 4, but he was my #4 prospect in the system. Ideally, it would have been Kyle Teel and someone just a peg lower headlining the deal, but as it ended up, not really all that painful, in my opinion. If the Red Sox now make the juice worth the squeeze.
I like Teel, his tools will really play up as a catcher, but to me, it’s just not a profile of a must-keep prospect. Chase Meidroth is a hell of a baseball player, but did not have a path here, and needs to be able to do more damage with his contact. Him being in a deal is the least surprising news of the winter. Wikelman Gonzalez is one of the most frustrating prospects in recent memory. His arm is special, but his control, command, and composure are all over the place. Maybe the White Sox can fix something, but he seems destined to be a reliever soon.
This kind of feels like one of the A.J. Preller trades when the Padres system was so stacked. They’d jump in and get their big target, and it almost always felt crazy that they didn’t have to touch their best of the best prospects.
After signing Aroldis Chapman, and putting Crochet’s money on the books, the Red Sox are now about $49M under the luxury tax threshold.
A shit ton of space to make more major upgrades, and since you made this trade, you better turn around and give yourself the best chance to win immediately with a young ace. The rest of this winter will tell you a lot about John Henry, because if you’re making Breslow erode what was built to get pitching, the money better be there to support the cause. More upper echelon, or even elite pitching. A big bat. Crochet, Triston Casas, and Roman Anthony contract extensions. Get the checkbook ready, or this window that took a long time to build will close so fast heads will spin.
As for Crochet himself, he was incredible this year. Basically Mason Miller, but 2.5x the innings while starting. Over 146 IP, he put together 2.83 xERA, 2.69 FIP, 2.38 xFIP, 2.53 SIERA, and 2.37 dERA. Just fucking insane.
126 pitchers threw 100+ innings in 2024, Crochet’s K% and K-BB% both ranked 1st, his in-zone contact ranked 3rd, and his chase rate ranked 8th. Just ass-kicking dominance.
His fastball, cutter, changeup, and sinker all had 30%+ whiff rates, and his sweeper was over 40%.
Hopefully the Sox can keep him on the mound.
