Garrett Crochet Reveals How He ‘Turned The Page’ From Rough Spring originally appeared on NESN.
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Leading up to Garrett Crochet’s Opening Day start against the Cincinnati Reds, there were reasons to worry about the Boston Red Sox ace.
After finishing second in the AL Cy Young race last year, he didn’t look like himself at all in spring training. His velocity was down and he got hit hard, going 1-2 with a 7.36 ERA in four starts.
After leading the American League with a career-high 205 1/3 innings last season, it was fair to wonder if the Red Sox had pushed him too hard last year.
Fortunately, all of those concerns went out the window on Thursday. Crochet immediately returned to form, firing six shutout innings and racking up eight strikeouts in Boston’s 3-0 victory at a sold-out Great American Ball Park.
After the game, the two-time All-Star opened up about how he was able to put his poor spring behind him.
After a rough spring, in which he allowed 12 runs in 14 2/3 innings, Garrett Crochet looked more like his self Thursday.
“I’ve got a lot of self-belief, but in the moment this spring, I definitely thought I sucked.”
On Crochet’s season-opening win:https://t.co/0QfNdS515e
— Jen McCaffrey (@jcmccaffrey) March 27, 2026
“I’ve got a lot of self-belief, but in the moment this spring, I definitely thought I sucked,” he told The Athletic’s Jen McCaffrey (subscription required). “But I knew that wasn’t who I was. You got to be able to turn the page, and no better time to do it than first game of the season. Just trying to help get the guys off on the right foot.”
Crochet also talked about ditching the splitter he’d been working on during spring training and going back to basics.
“Just a lot more strikes, a lot more usage of the three fastballs,” Crochet said. “In spring, toying with the splitter, today it was like, ‘Hey, I’m banging the splitter for the year.’ I’ll just go back to the changeup I was throwing last year, and was able to flash that a couple times but didn’t overuse that or the sweeper, and I just felt like I was attacking with strengths and weaknesses when needed to be.”
Overall, Crochet was very happy with his dominant performance. He allowed just three hits and two walks while throwing 52 of his 80 pitches for strikes.
“Very satisfying,” Crochet said. “I came into today with a goal of just putting the team in a position to win. It’s a lot simpler when you keep it as black and white as that. Did my job.”
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