The Boston Red Sox appeared to be in a good spot Wednesday night.
The Sox were tied 1-1 with the New York Mets with one out in the sixth inning and seeking their first three-game winning streak since late April. Their ace, Garrett Crochet, was dealing, with just five hits allowed and five strikeouts on 85 pitches, his latest a nasty sweeper to ring up Juan Soto.
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SIGN UP HERE But that would be the last pitch Crochet threw, as manager Alex Cora emerged from the dugout to give Crochet the short hook and summon reliever Liam Hendriks from the bullpen. While Hendriks completed the sixth inning, it was all downhill from there: Hendriks, Brennan Bernardino and Sean Newcomb combined to allow four runs over the final three innings en route to a disappointing 5-1 loss.
So, why did Cora pull Crochet so early? The Red Sox manager explained that Wednesday was a planned shorter start for Crochet, who leads the majors in innings pitched and had gone a full seven innings in three of his last four starts.
"It’s for the benefit of the player,” Cora said after the game, via MassLive.com. "We’re here for the long run and we need that guy to make his starts. And for us to go to where we feel we can go, we need him."
Crochet -- who wasn't informed about Boston's plans to limit him before the game -- wasn't too happy about his early exit.
"I was frustrated,” Crochet said, via MassLive. “Just wanted a chance to pick up my teammates, the bullpen. They’ve obviously worked really hard this series. And I wanted to try and keep them out of it as much as possible."
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To Crochet's point, no Boston starter had lasted more than 4.2 innings in the previous four games entering Wednesday. And just one day earlier, six Red Sox pitchers combined to log 6.2 innings of relief after starter Walker Buehler was ejected in the third inning.
Yet there was Cora at Fenway Park on Wednesday pulling the plug on Crochet's shortest outing of the season, and turning to an already-taxed bullpen to get 11 more outs.
"I like to think that I’m built up for that workload at this point," Crochet said. "Obviously the focus is on being healthy in October, which I understand. But my focus right now is looking out for my teammates, trying to pick up slack when there needs to be.
"If I’m gonna be the starting pitcher that we’re looking towards right now, I wanna go out there and lead the league in innings. I want to throw as many innings as possible."
There's a rational case for monitoring Crochet's workload; the 25-year-old is just three years removed from Tommy John surgery and has only thrown more than 100 innings in a season once (146 in 2024). If the Red Sox want Crochet to be at his best in October, there's a benefit to not overworking him on a cold night in May.
But the reality is that Boston may not be playing in October unless it can win games more consistently. The Red Sox are 25-26 after Wednesday's loss and now are 3-6 in their last nine games. In their defeat to the Mets, they squandered a rare opportunity to complete a series sweep and gain momentum entering a three-game set with the lowly Baltimore Orioles.
You could argue there's plenty of time for the Red Sox to get hot. But their conservative approach with Crochet highlights an overall lack of urgency of Fenway Park that's reflected in the team's current record.