Garrett Crochet Best Hope for Red Sox Making Extended Playoff Run

BOSTON — Alex Cora and Alex Bregman tried to relax the locker room on Sunday by focusing on football, and how bad Cora’s fantasy team was. While Cora didn’t sense players pressing in the two losses, he said before the series finale, Bregman noted an amped-up clubhouse for the crucial September series. So they looked away from baseball, celebrated Trevor Story’s 10-year MLB anniversary and returned to the field on Sunday night.

There, Garrett Crochet’s start, easily his most consequential in a Sox uniform, nearly proved enough to calm a teetering season on its own. But the Sox would need run support in a game where the ball left the yard three times off Yankee bats. And Boston created more than enough in the first by keeping the line moving, as the team often says. All nine Sox batters made plate appearances in the opening frame after starving for offense on Friday and Saturday, the first five recording hits before Crochet and the bullpen carried them to a 6-4 win.

“That was huge,” Cora said. “We’ve been talking about runners in scoring position. We did an amazing job putting the ball in play. Alex, man on third, two strikes, makes contact, gets the single and we kept going. In an era that people love what (the Yankees do), hit the ball out of the ballpark. That’s the reason they’re so good. Where we’re at right now, we’re not doing that, so we have to cash in. We have to make contact when it matters and try to score, of course, as many runs as possible.”

Yet aside from that flash, a definitive difference between the two teams emerged from the final Yankees-Red Sox series. Aaron Judge resembled himself. Jazz Chisholm Jr. stole the show on Saturday and Cody Bellinger alongside Giancarlo Stanton give the Yankees lineup pop the Sox don’t have without Bregman playing at his best, Roman Anthony available or the Trevor Story from earlier in the year. So the Sox needed to lean on their pitching, which Cora called for since the day Anthony went down and received to near perfection.

Crochet got ahead on Yankees hitters, dialing up to 99 miles-per-hour early and dropping sweepers into the low-80s to strike out Judge in his first two at-bats. The first five New York batters fell, all fell behind in a 1-2 count or saw fewer pitches into the third before Ben Rice struck the Yankees’ first hit in the eighth hole. Then, Crochet downed Austin Slater and Judge in six-pitch at bats. The long ball hurt him again, Amed Rosario lifting an off-speed pitch over the monster before Judge hit a fastball 400 feet. Crochet’s now allowed 10 homers over his last seven starts while still managing a 5-2 record for the team with an ERA just below 4.00. It’s part of his approach — deliberately throwing strikes.

“He’s an ace. Big, big stuff,” Aaron Boone said before the game. “Big arm. Deception to the delivery. Pitches in the strike zone. Big fastball, cutter, slider. He’s tough. As best as you can, easier said than done, you’re gonna get some pitches to hit, and you gotta make hay on those and then hopefully have the ability to lay off when he is expanding, which he does a good job of, especially when he’s ahead, where he can get you expand because his stuff’s so good. So as best as we can, we gotta do that and then take advantage of the pitches that we’ll get, because we’ll get some to hit.”

The win marked Crochet’s 20th quality start, the most from a Red Sox pitcher since Chris Sale in 2017. He completed the sixth inning with 99 pitches before passing a 6-3 lead onto Steven Matz, who worked around a homer of his own, before Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman retired six batters in a row. That’s the formula for a Sox win over the Yankees as their collision course continued over the weekend, though New York’s series win tilted the likelihood toward the three AL wild card games taking place in Yankee Stadium. An even harder park to keep the ball in.

Crochet can do so by missing bats, all of his strikeouts, which came one short of tying a career-high, came on swings-and-misses. And the distance he covered in the game, avoiding turning the middle innings over for relief, came as part of a careful management plan that has him on the verge of the playoffs healthy and peaking. The start that got postponed in August and an abbreviated one before that, along with a careful watch on his pitch totals frustrated him earlier in the year. He understood more, in retrospect, what he can allow this Sox team to do even after losing two crucial games to begin the series. One win in his Game 1 start in October would give the Sox two chances to advance. That’s a good bet after taking 21 of his 30 starts through Sunday.

“For all those questions about workload and stuff down, I think the last pitch was what, 99 (MPH)?” Cora said. “So he’s in a good spot. I think the trainers and the organization have done an amazing job taking care of him. Obviously, the Mets one, everybody was going nuts, but there’s a reason, right? For him to be doing this, we needed to do it that way when we did it, then after the all-star break, the group prepared a schedule for him, and we took care of him for him to take care of us, and hopefully the rest of the month and hopefully, in the next one, he’s a huge part of it.”

• Wilyer Abreu (calf) took more batting practice and ran the bases as he progressed toward a potential returning in this week’s Athletics series. Alex Cora did not share a more definitive timeline for now.
• The Red Sox did not announce their starting pitching plan for the Sacramento series between Tuesday and Thursday, though it will likely involve some combination of Connelly Early, Payton Tolle and Kyle Harrison.
• Boston moved 1.0 game ahead of the Astros in the wild card standings as Seattle built a full game edge on Houston for the west with its win on Sunday. The Rangers, who also lost, fell 3.0 games behind the Sox outside the playoff picture. The Sox trail the Yankees by 1.5 games for the top wild card spot and home field in the first round of the playoffs, where they’re still lined up against each other.