When the Red Sox traded for Garrett Crochet at the Winter Meetings, he rocketed to the top of their rotation, immediately slotting in as their No. 1 starter.
But while Crochet boasts an impressive resume as one of baseball’s best pitchers last season, he’s still just 25 and has one year of experience in a big-league rotation. Drafted in 2020 and debuting two months later, Crochet pitched in the Chicago White Sox’s bullpen before missing all of 2022 and most of 2023 recovering from Tommy John surgery.
In the midst of his breakout season last year, he led the White Sox’s rotation, albeit for a 121-loss team. As the Red Sox enter the 2025 season with plans of contending again for the postseason, adding a veteran starter with playoff experience is something multiple people with the Red Sox have acknowledged would help a young staff.
Toward the end of the season, manager Alex Cora, unprompted, relayed an interesting conversation he had with starter Nick Pivetta as the right-hander reflected on his time in Boston and what helped him find success.
“He said something today toward the end, it caught my attention,” Cora said. “When he got here he was comfortable because he knew he was surrounded by guys that had been there, done that. He knew Nate (Eovaldi) was going to take care of him, Chris (Sale) was going to as well, and Eduardo (Rodriguez), they have the experience of winning. For him, it was just to show up here and work and stay quiet and follow them, and that was very interesting. I never saw it that way.”
Pivetta arrived in Boston at the 2020 trade deadline at the age of 27. Not young in age, but young experience-wise in the majors having bounced to and from the minors with the Philadelphia Phillies.
Much of the Boston rotation is lacking experience like Pivetta was in 2020. Starters Tanner Houck (28), Brayan Bello (25) and Kutter Crawford (28) aren’t young in years, but last season marked a stepping stone for each of them, as they made 30 starts apiece for the first time in their careers. Houck had an impressive season after several years of bouncing between the rotation and bullpen. Crawford solidified himself in the rotation despite some bumps in the road, pitching a career-high in innings. And Bello, while not as strong as in 2023, also established a career-high in innings and rebounded in the second half after a rough first few months.
Lucas Giolito, 30, represents the lone veteran presence in the current Red Sox rotation. He’s entering his eighth season in the majors and certainly brings pedigree to the group. But like most of the Red Sox’s rotation, he lacks significant postseason experience, with two career postseason starts, both coming with the White Sox (2020 and 2021). Crochet pitched out of the bullpen for Chicago those same years. Houck, in his first full season in the majors, pitched five games out of the bullpen in the 2021 postseason, while Bello and Crawford have no postseason experience. (Patrick Sandoval, who agreed to a two-year deal with the Red Sox on Friday, is in the middle of his rehab from Tommy John surgery. He’s never appeared in the postseason before.)
Among the remaining pitchers on the market, nearly all have more postseason experience than the entire Red Sox rotation. Top free agent Corbin Burnes has pitched in nine postseason games, including three starts, across four trips to the playoffs with Milwaukee and Baltimore. Free agent Jack Flaherty has pitched in 10 playoff games, including nine starts, in four postseason trips for St. Louis, Baltimore and Los Angeles.
Walker Buehler closed out the World Series-clinching game for the Dodgers this past season and has pitched in 19 games, making 18 starts, in the postseason for Los Angeles.
Pivetta added some context to his conversation with Cora.
“It was just being able to worry about myself and knowing where I was in my career, knowing that I was on a team where I think there were nine guys on the team had just won the World Series in 2018,” Pivetta said. “I know I could just rely on them. Not that I can’t rely on people in this room or in any other way but overall it was that that they had more experience than I had. I was learning from them from Sale, from Nate, even from (Xander Bogaerts). I knew they had the experience and they could somewhat teach me or they had an understanding what it was to go to the postseason and I could kind of rely on them to kind of help guide me through that process as well.”
With Crochet added to the mix, FanGraphs projects the Red Sox team WAR rising from 37.5 to 40.6, which may not seem like much, but it moved them from 21st overall to 13th right after the trade. That said, it still leaves them in the middle of the pack.
As the Red Sox pursue more rotation additions, experience matters, particularly in a market like Boston.
But pitching coach Andrew Bailey offered a different viewpoint, challenging his current group.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that we need an experienced starter to set the tone of what 162 is. We just had three homegrown guys go pole to pole pretty much,” he said. “We want guys that are going to help us win a championship. I don’t really care in what vessel that comes.
“At some point in time young guys become old guys, there isn’t an age or a date of service that that transition occurs,” he added.
Still, Rafael Devers is the lone holdover from the 2018 World Series team. Inexperienced postseason teams can win, but many times, it’s the experienced clubs that last the longest.
“It’s always good to have winning guys in the clubhouse, guys with experiences, but also really good leaders and teammates and guys that want to show up and work hard and do the right things,” Pivetta said.
The Red Sox finished 81-81 last season with some good stretches and some awful stretches. The Crochet trade moves them in the right direction but adding a more veteran pitcher to the rotation gives them a better chance of not only reaching the postseason for the first time in years, but being more competitive once they get there.
(Photo of Andrew Bailey (left) and Brayan Bello from spring training: Maddie Malhotra / Boston Red Sox / Getty Images)
