Can Red Sox withstand this version of Garrett Crochet? Boston's troubles start, but don't end, with the ace

The Red Sox prevailed at home on Monday over the Tigers, 8-6, on Patriots Day. The win meant they salvaged a split against a red-hot Tigers team, but acting like all is well right now would be folly. Starting pitcher Sonny Gray left early in the game with a hamstring injury and the awful start to the season from ace Garrett Crochet continues to linger. 

Crochet last season went 18-5 with a 2.59 ERA and 255 strikeouts in 205 ⅓ innings and only the existence of Tarik Skubal prevented him from winning the American League Cy Young. Through five starts this season, Crochet has a 7.88 ERA and 1.63 WHIP. He was dominant in his Opening Day start at Cincinnati and pretty good on April 7 at home against the Brewers. He's otherwise had two sub-par outings and one utter catastrophe. 

In terms of the latter, he coughed up 11 runs (10 earned) in 1 ⅔ innings in Minnesota last week with three walks, a hit batter, a wild pitch, two home runs and zero strikeouts. It was just about as bad an outing as you'd ever see from a major-league pitcher -- especially jarring given Crochet's talent level and pedigree. 

On Sunday, through 4 ⅔ innings, Crochet had eight strikeouts and had only allowed one run on three hits. And then he gave up a home run, walk, single, home run and single before finally escaping the inning with a groundout. The final line ended up showing five earned runs on seven hits in five innings. 

This just isn't good enough and the Red Sox -- a 2025 playoff team -- are 9-13, saved only from the basement of the AL East by last year's pennant winners, the Toronto Blue Jays.

It isn't only Crochet at fault. The Red Sox's offense isn't pulling its weight in general. The team ranks 25th in OPS and is tied for dead last in baseball (with the Giants) with 13 home runs. The rotation was supposed to be the backbone of the team. Ranger Suárez had two bad outings to start the season, but he's been great in his last two. Brayan Bello has been awful in his four starts. Connelly Early has been great! Sonny Gray, who came over in a trade to help solidify the top half of the rotation, has been mediocre and left early Monday. He's set to undergo an MRI to determine the next steps.

In order to turn things around, the Red Sox need more from a healthy Gray. They need Suárez and Early to keep throwing well. They need a lot more from either Bello or whomever replaces him in the rotation at some point. The offense has to hit more, notably for more power -- and, hey, maybe Monday will prove to be the start of an upswing. 

Most of all, though, the Red Sox need their elite-level ace back. 

Crochet believes he knows the issue and that he's capable of fixing it. 

"Right now, every mistake that I make is getting absolutely hammered," he said Sunday (via The Athletic). "But it's because they're mistakes when I'm behind in the count.

"I went into it today with a willingness to throw the four-seamer at the top zone at a high volume. Then I dig myself in the hole versus (Dillon) Dingler and kind of just fall into a trap of having to throw a four-seam for a strike. … Right now, I feel like I know what needs to happen. Just a matter of doing it."

In today's era of having every bit of data at our fingertips, we often question where a pitcher's velocity is when he's having issues. Crochet is right in line with last season there. He's averaging 95.9 mph with his four-seam fastball and while that's lower than last year overall, it's identical to his results last April. As it got warmer and the season progressed, he threw harder (97.2 mph in August, for example). 

Did he get off to a slow start last season too? Not so much. Through five starts in 2025, he had a 1.13 ERA with 35 strikeouts in 32 innings.

If there is any concern here, I'd submit fatigue carryover from 2025. Crochet first became a full-time starter in 2024 with the White Sox and worked 146 innings. He followed that up with a jump to 213 innings (including the playoffs) last season. 

Crochet is a big guy at 6-foot-6, 245 pounds and has an incredibly strong arm, but that kind of workload increase is likely to be a shock to anyone's system.

While the velocity isn't an overwhelming concern, Crochet's control may be. He has already hit four batters after only hitting three all of last season. His walk rate is up to 7.8% from last year's 5.7%. He's also regularly falling behind in counts, as he mentioned. He's only gotten hitters down 0-2 19% of the time compared to 30.4% of the time last season. 

Pitchers go through slumps, just like hitters. It's possible this is just a slow start to the season for Crochet and, again, he's been good in two of his five starts and was awfully close to a good outing on Sunday. 

There are certainly reasons for concern worth monitoring, though, and while the Red Sox need several parts of the ballclub to play better, he's the most important one.