Red Sox
“Big boy throwing really good stuff up there.”
It doesn’t take much to draw parallels between Chris Sale and Garrett Crochet.
Both are left-handed starters who rose through the ranks of the White Sox organization. Both were eventually traded to the Red Sox in blockbuster deals in hopes of asserting themselves as aces in Boston.
And on Friday, both southpaws found themselves on a collision course at Fenway Park.
“Should be fun tonight,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said pregame. “Obviously with everything that is going on, City Connect [uniforms], hopefully it’s a fun night here. Those two guys, obviously they’re not facing each other, but there’s a lot of things there that they have in common.
“The most important one is when they go out there, they want to win bad. There’s going to be a lot of ‘M-F’ fastball today.”
Sale and Crochet lived up to the billing in one of the more anticipated pitcher’s duels this season — with both lefties going seven innings in what was an eventual 4-2 Red Sox loss.
Sale dominated against his former team in his first start at Fenway since September 2023 — allowing just one earned run and five hits over his seven innings of work while striking out eight.
But Crochet was also up to the task against the Braves in a game with little margin for error — allowing two earned runs over his seven innings to go along with seven hits, zero walks, and eight strikeouts.
Crochet’s lone blemish came in the second inning. After striking out the side in the first off of just 11 pitches (five swings and misses), Crochet surrendered back-to-back solo shots to Matt Olson and Sean Murphy in the next frame — giving Atlanta a two-run cushion that would remain in place by the time Crochet…