Craig Breslow pulled off his biggest move yet as chief baseball officer of the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday, acquiring 25-year-old lefty starter Garrett Crochet from the Chicago White Sox for four prospects.
How long Crochet pitches in Boston remains to be seen. He is under team control for two more years as an arbitration-eligible player, and is expected to earn just $2.9 million in 2025 – a bargain for a pitcher who has already demonstrated ace-like qualities and who is expected to make a sizable jump from the 146 innings he pitched in 2024.
The Red Sox could simply play the arbitration game and see where things go from there, but that risks Crochet going to free agency after the 2026 season and cashing in elsewhere after just two years in Boston. They could also try to lock up Crochet on a longer-term deal now.
Another potential factor is that there were reports in July that Crochet, if he got traded mid-season, did not want to pitch in the playoffs unless he had an extension with his new team already secured. That was due to workload concerns amid his first full season as a starter.
Breslow joined WEEI’s Jones and Keefe on Thursday to shed some light on where things stand with Crochet’s contract and future. He said there are no restrictions for the 2025 season and that the Red Sox do not need to extend Crochet long-term right now.
“We are looking at this as right now, we've got a guy that's got two years of control,” Breslow said. “And we are approaching this with no restrictions. Obviously, anything beyond that, we'll explore when the time is right. But right now, we're focused on ’25 and ’26 and being able to write his name in at the top of the rotation.”
Other questions regarding Crochet include his injury history and inexperience as a starter. He missed the entire 2022 season and a chunk of 2023 due to Tommy John surgery. He was also a reliever for his first three major-league seasons before making the jump to starter in 2024. Even in college, Crochet did more relieving than starting. He never pitched in the minors outside of a rehab stint in 2023, making the jump straight from college to the majors in 2020.
Breslow said the Red Sox did extensive homework on all of those questions for many months and were comfortable enough with the answers they came up with to make the trade.
“These conversations, they started a year ago around Garrett,” Breslow said. “And then there are certain times during the year where naturally they flare up again, obviously around the trade deadline and the winter meetings, GM meetings. So, we've got pretty extensive history around the conversations and getting comfortable with Garrett, the performance, the stuff, the medical. So, we feel very comfortable with the work that we've done, our medical team reviewing his history, and most importantly, looking at the fact that he threw 150 innings as a starter last year, 150 dominant innings.”