When the Red Sox acquired Garrett Crochet last offseason from the Chicago White Sox they believed the talented left-hander could be the ace the club needed to lead their starting rotation into the future.
Crochet rewarded the club’s faith with a phenomenal debut season, and Wednesday he nearly took home one of baseball’s best honors.
Crochet finished runner-up in the American League Cy Young Award vote, taking second behind Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, who won the award for the second straight year.
Skubal received 26 first-place votes and four second-place votes to earn 198 points, and Crochet received the other four first-place votes and 26 second-place votes to earn 132 points. Houston’s Hunter Brown finished a distant third with 80 points, New York’s Max Fried was fourth with 61 points and Seattle’s Bryan Woo was fifth with 26 points.
Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman also received Cy Young votes, earning four fifth-place votes to finish seventh with four total points.
Crochet’s first season in Boston was an unqualified success. The big left-hander led MLB in strikeouts (255) and led the AL in innings pitched (205.1). He also went 18-5 with a 2.59 ERA and 6.3 wins above replacement, all of which ranked as career-bests.
The 26-year-old put himself in rarified air, as the only other pitchers in Red Sox history to reach all of those marks are Pedro Martinez (1999, 2000) and Smoky Joe Wood (1912).
While the Cy Young vote took place before the playoffs began, Crochet continued his dominance into the postseason, striking out 11 while allowing one run over 7.2 innings in Boston’s Game 1 victory over the New York Yankees in the AL Wild Card series.
Crochet also agreed to a six-year, $170 million extension back in April that takes effect next season and will ensure the ace remains in Boston through the end of the decade.
As great as Crochet’s season was, the vote disparity between him and Skubal wound up being fairly lopsided.
Skubal’s numbers weren’t much different than Crochet’s, but he was better in several key areas. The Tigers ace had a lower ERA (2.21 vs. 2.59), allowed fewer home runs (18 vs. 24) and most notably had a significantly better walks and hits per innings pitched figure (0.891 vs. 1.028).
Skubal was also more consistent. Crochet had four starts in which he allowed five or more runs, including one rough outing against the Guardians where he gave up seven runs and four homers. Skubal only had one start with five runs allowed, which ironically came against the Red Sox and during which he still struck out 11 batters.
With his win Skubal becomes the 23rd pitcher in MLB history to win multiple Cy Young Awards. He is the first to repeat since Jacob deGrom won back-to-back NL Cy Young Awards in 2018-19 and the first AL pitcher to do so since Martinez in 1999-2000.
Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes unanimously won the NL Cy Young Award, beating out Philadelphia’s Cristopher Sanchez and Los Angeles’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
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