The Boston Red Sox made their first major acquisition of the 2024-2025 offseason on the last full day of baseball’s winter meetings, trading for Chicago White Sox ace lefty Garrett Crochet, according to an MLB.com report. The report noted that neither the Red Sox or White Sox have confirmed the deal.
Jeff Passan, a top baseball insider for ESPN, also reported the deal. Passan wrote that the Red Sox were “using their deep well of prospects to land the best starting pitching available on the trade market.”
Pair of First-Round Draft Picks Included in Deal
Topping the list of prospects heading to Chicago is Kyle Teel, the Boston system’s Number Four-ranked prospect and the 25th-ranked prospect in baseball according to MLB.com ratings. Teel, a catcher, was picked in the first round, 14th overall, by the Red Sox in 2023 and was, per MLB.com, “the consensus best backstop in the 2023 Draft after hitting .407/.475/.655 and winning Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year honors” at the University of Virginia.
Draft-watchers considered it a surprise that Teel fell as far as 14th in the first round. He was pegged as a Top 10 pick in 2023. According to a Boston Globe report, concerns about how well he would develop as a hitter may have been the reason for his slide.
The Red Sox also gave up three other prized prospects in the deal that will bring Crochet to Fenway Park, a group led by outfielder Braden Montgomery, the team’s first-round draft pick in 2024 out of Texas A&M University. The 21-year-old Montgomery who transferred to Texas A&M from Stanford University, belted 27 home runs in his final college season for the Aggies in 236 at-bats.
Crochet Has Swing-and-Miss Stuff, a Top Red Sox Requirement
In Crochet, the Red Sox acquire a top-of-the rotation starter who at age 25 is two years removed from Tommy John surgery. Crochet comes at a nominal salary commitment for 2025, earning just $2.9 million. He will be eligible for salary arbitration in 2026 and is not slated to become a free agent until after that season.
Red Sox Chief of Baseball Operations Craig Breslow has said that the team plans to emphasize it’s pitching staff’s swing-and-miss rate and Crochet fits that bill. According to Baseball Savant, his whiff rate of 33.1 percent last season placed him in the 93rd percentile of all Major League pitchers.
Crochet relies mainly on two pitches, according to StatCast data, his four-seam fastball which he threw on 53 percent of his 2,395 pitches last season, and his cutter which he threw 28 percent of the time. He also mixed in a changeup, sweeper and sinker. His four-seamer averaged 97.1 mph, better than the average for all left-handed pitchers which was 93.2 mph last season.
Also included in the deal for Crochet were shortstop Chase Meidroth who posted an .837 OPS for the Red Sox Triple-A affiliate in Worcester, Massachusetts, last year. Meidroth was a 2022 fourth-roun pick. Wikelman Gonzalez, a 2018 international signing from Venezuela and the Red Sox 14th-ranked prospect, rounded out the trade.
In December of 2016, the Red Sox traded their top overall prospect, Cuban infielder Yoan Moncada, to the White Sox along with fireballing reliever Michael Kopech in exchange for another dominant lefty starter, Chris Sale.
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