PHOENIX -- For a left-hander who has averaged over 96 mph on his fastball in his last two major league seasons, Garrett Crochet gets asked a lot if he's going to throw harder.
As the towering 24-year-old laughed in acknowledgement of this irony, it seemed safe to try it once more.
"I was throwing 100 mph in college that year, but leading up to the MLB season because of COVID I had about [six] months to build up and be ready to go," Crochet said. "The throwing that I was accustomed to, and being able to build up over that long period, is a lot different than your average offseason. If it comes back, it comes back, but regardless, I'm feeling healthy and it's coming out pretty well."
Crochet's logic that if you resigned him to a back field for six months and loaded him up to explode for a few weeks of short bursts, maybe he'd approach the raw power of his old highlights. But very deeply he longs for a larger, season-long impact. His conditioning has been geared around being able to throw, sit down, get up and throw again without the depreciation of a short reliever.
"In the clubhouse I feel like everyone is either cutting down or bulking up and doing the exact opposite of what we did last year," Crochet said, providing a better quip on the nature of spring training conditioning stories than most snarky reporters can manage.
Yet after using his Tommy John surgery rehabilitation period to add strength and mass, building himself into a terrifying physical presence but reducing his mobility, Crochet sees some real purpose in cutting 20 pounds this winter. He needs a delivery that is repeatable and fluid enough to command pitches better than he ever has as a pro, for longer outings than he's managed in several years, over a longer season workload than he's ever endured.
In Crochet's limited career history, it's unfair to say righties have hit him hard (.218/.315/.329 for his career), they just clearly have more ability to do damage against his four-seam/slider combination than left-handers can manage (.211/.330/.242). With his slider in the low-80s with big horizontal movement, and with his four-seamer no longer generating the otherworldly whiff rates that it got at triple-digits, Crochet wanted something sharper and in a different velocity band to add to his arsenal.
"Really just another offering to righties," Crochet said of his new cutter. "I feel confident with my changeup. But my slider -- I call it a slider, but it's really more of a slower sweeper. It's just having something to bridge the gap between my fastball and my slider. I think it will be a good offering. Probably won't use it to lefties that much because it's kind of right into their bat path, but to righties exclusively, I think it will be a good pitch."
With Dylan Cease starting Opening Day, Erick Fedde and Chris Flexen brought in on major league deals, Michael Soroka out of options and Michael Kopech preparing to be a starter still, the odds seem a little stacked against Crochet winning a rotation spot. Just starting so far removed from extended innings, let alone any actual history with a five-day routine in pro ball, would be a tall-enough hill to climb on its own for Crochet. Pedro Grifol hinted at some of the pitchers being stretched out in camp settling into long relief roles, and that could represent a more achievable compromise.
Moreover, Crochet walked 13 hitters in 12⅔ innings in the majors last season, and looked very much like someone still trying to find rhythm and timing in his delivery after a long injury layoff. While he doesn't want to claim that he's rediscovered the top-end velocity that made him a rookie sensation, Crochet worked in the winter to find some of those old mechanisms that made him feel powerful in his delivery.
"It was just the tempo of things going down the mound," Crochet said. "I felt like I was rushing a little bit. I changed the position of my hands a little bit. They're a little bit higher whenever I'm breaking and starting my arm swing. That was a huge part of it: feeling the right tempo, finding the right rhythm down the slope."
Crochet vaulting to a rotation piece after an injury-limited year in the bullpen, without a great history of control as a reliever, still feels at this point like an early spring storyline that has yet to collide with the reality of the season. But for someone whose starter development has been stalled by forces beyond his control, Crochet is rightly coveting a chance to force the issue.
"All I can do is whatever is within my power in my five-day routine," Crochet said about his innings getting curbed at some point this year. "Just be as open and honest with the training and the coaching staff as I can."
Might as well admit it, you're addicted to notes
Jimmy Lambert is feeling healthy after ankle surgery at the end of last season, where a bone spur was removed from his right foot. He will still be building strength in the foot over the course of spring training, but expects the process to be complete by opening day. Lambert is out of minor league options this spring, but expects better performance than last year now that he's free of pain when his back foot is pushing off the mound.
Ky Bush feels healthy at spring training for the first time in his professional career. After coming over from the Angels last July in exchange for Lucas Giolito, Bush racked up an unseemly 6.70 ERA with 22 walks in 41⅔ innings at Double-A Birmingham with low-90s velocity. But the towering 24-year-old left-hander was still feeling hesitant to rotate his arm with full force after a lat strain that claimed months from his 2023 season.
Bush shifted to the first-base side of the rubber during last season and likes the early returns for the angle it gave him to pitching inside against righties. But a healthy finish allowed Bush to attend offseason camps held by the Sox in October and January, to install larger prescribed fixes of shortening his arm path, riding longer on his back leg in his delivery and not opening up too early on his front side. During the latter January session, Bush met up with Brian Bannister and worked on understanding how those cues fit into his natural plane of rotation.
"The velo has gone up," Bush said. "And it definitely feels like everything else has ticked up too: slider, curveball, changeup. It's something that has sharpened up my stuff all around."
