UNTOUCHABLE: Red Sox Rotation REVEALED – Why Garrett Crochet and Payton Tolle Are ESSENTIAL

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Garrett Crochet and Peyton Tully are obviously locks, but which pitchers actually belong on the Red Sox staff for 2027? [upbeat music] You are Locked On Red Sox, your daily Boston Red Sox podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your team every day. Hello, and welcome to Locked On Red Sox, your daily Boston Red Sox podcast. I'm your host, Gabby Maljanian, and on yesterday's show, I built the Red Sox 2027 roster from a position player perspective in terms of who stays and who goes, who are the wild cards, who are the tough decisions, and who are the locks. So today, I'm gonna be doing something very similar, but this time with the pitching staff. And this one's actually interesting, maybe even more interesting than the position player side, because the Red Sox pitching was the biggest reason that this team got to the playoffs in the first place. The Red Sox allowed 611 runs on the season, which is the third fewest in Major League Baseball, and their underlying run differential suggested that this was more like a 90-win team than the 87-win team that we ended up seeing. But this is where things get interesting because, yes, it's a good pitching staff, but not even close to a settled pitching staff because Sonny Gray's a free agent who's also contemplating retirement, so we don't even know if he's gonna be playing for anybody next season, no less the Red Sox. Garrett Crochet essentially lost his entire season to a shoulder injury. Bryan Bello ended up in the bullpen. Garrett Whitlock has a club option. And then you have Tanner Houk, Cutter Crawford, Johan Oviedo, and somehow Craig Breslow has to turn all of that into five starters and a bullpen, plus the guys they already had in the bullpen. So I'm not asking today whether the Red Sox need pitching, because we know that their strong suit was pitching. I'm more asking which pitchers am I actually bringing back and what role am I giving them. So I'm gonna start with the easy ones. When I call somebody a lock, I don't mean that if the Dodgers call and offer Shohei Ohtani, Craig Breslow hangs up the phone. Let's not be ridiculous. I mean I'm planning my 2027 team with this player on it and not actively trying to move them. And I'm gonna start with probably the most obvious pitcher right now that's in the Red Sox system, Garrett Crochet. Clearly a lock. You're not moving on from him. But I am putting a big asterisk next to his name for health, because this was basically a lost season for him. He made only six regular season starts, and then shoulder inflammation sidelined him beginning in late April. He ended up going 3 and 3 with a 6.3 ERA before spending about five months on the injured list, and then he finally returned for the Wild Card Series in a really limited bullpen role. And I don't really care about the ERA, that 6.3. Over six starts, okay, fine, that's really a tiny sample size and he just had one brutally awful outing and a couple others where he just didn't pitch well. So yes, that's going to inflate the ERA. But I'm much more concerned with the fact that Garrett Crochet essentially