Red Sox’s Garrett Crochet Offers Odd Assessment Of Dominant Outing

The Boston Red Sox got another scoreless outing from ace Garrett Crochet, but still needed extra innings and a walk-off hit from Triston Casas to defeat the Chicago White Sox on Saturday at Fenway Park.

Crochet struck out seven, walked two, and allowed just four hits across six innings of work. Despite leaving the game with a 3-0 lead, the southpaw felt he could be better.

“It feels good, but I feel like I’m getting away with murder,” he told reporters, as seen on NESN’s postgame coverage. “It’s only a matter of time until I get caught. I feel like the way that I’m throwing the ball isn’t up to my par. It’s only a matter of time before I get burned, and I’d just rather avoid that at all costs.

“This is not the standard that I hold myself to. I expect to have my best stuff every time out. That was obviously not the case, but you can dream and you can work toward perfection even if you’ll never reach it. That’s kind of what we do as pitchers and baseball players in general.”

Alex Cora knew Crochet was not at his best, but still gave the Red Sox the opportunity to win the game.

“The stuff was good (but) erratic,” Cora said on NESN’s postgame coverage. “Some deep counts, some two-strike hits. But, on a night that he was okay, that’s what you get. And he gave us a chance to win the game. It’s always important.”

Crochet acknowledged that the pitch counts got away from him at times.

“Bad counts. I need to get back to throwing through the target and not to the target,” he said. “That’s probably my third time saying that this year, so it sucks that I haven’t made that adjustment yet. It’s easy for me to find the adjustment in my tempo in mid-week bullpens; when the game happens, things speed up a little bit. But I feel like I was able to find it again in the sixth and get a shutdown inning, which was huge.”

In five starts for the Red Sox, Crochet is 2-1 with a 1.13 ERA. He has allowed four earned runs on 19 hits while striking out 35 and walking 10 batters he’s faced. It’s hard to imagine Crochet delivering on a higher level going forward, but he certainly believes he has it in him.

“I think I said in the spring: last year, six innings was the goal; this year it’s the floor,” he said. “I want to be going seven every time out, similar to my last outing. It’s my job as a starter.”