Red Sox’s $130 Million Star Pitcher Could Make MLB History This Season”
Garrett Crochet, who was a finalist for the Cy Young Award in 2025 with the Chicago White Sox, has a remarkable opportunity to make MLB history in the upcoming season. While he will aim to best fellow pitcher Tarik Skubal, the Boston Red Sox ace is also poised to make his own mark in the record books. Paul “Hembo” Hembekides, appearing on ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” podcast with Buster Olney, believes that Crochet could achieve something unprecedented: striking out 40% or more of the batters he faces in a season. Hembekides praised Crochet’s exceptional pitching, calling it potentially the best stuff in the league. He pointed out that among the 126 pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in 2024, Crochet ranked first in Stuff+, a metric that evaluates the quality of a pitcher’s pitches based on their physical characteristics. Additionally, Crochet was also the leader in inducing swings and misses within the strike zone, a statistic that is considered by experts to be an even more reliable indicator of future success than chase rates.
In 2024, Crochet struck out an impressive 35.1% of batters he faced. While this is already an elite figure, there is still room for improvement to reach the 40% threshold. At just 25 years old, Crochet is in the prime of his career and has the potential to take his strikeout numbers to new heights. For comparison, Gerrit Cole came the closest to achieving a 40% strikeout rate in MLB history, reaching 39.9% in 2019 with the Houston Astros. However, Cole was 28 years old at the time, three years older than Crochet is now.
Despite Crochet’s promising performance, current projections from FanGraphs do not predict him to exceed a strikeout rate of 33%. However, this doesn’t rule out the possibility of him surpassing expectations. In 2024, Crochet faced 595 batters, averaging 4.56 innings per start. With improved efficiency, he could pitch deeper into games, providing him with more opportunities to accumulate strikeouts. If everything falls into place, Crochet could become the first pitcher in MLB history to strike out 40% or more of the batters he faces, further cementing his place as one of the game’s elite talents.