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Garrett Crochet’s has been one of the season’s biggest and best breakthrough stories. The No. 3 scoring pitcher in fantasy baseball (283 points), he was selected 342nd overall on average and picked in only 8.7% of ESPN leagues in total.
At the same time, Crochet’s unexpected emergence has created an conundrum for fantasy managers. As a pitcher whose success has come at a near-complete surprise, his ability to sustain this performance level faces greater doubt than does most players. Is it time to trade the left-hander?
Crochet’s story is particularly unusual in that he’s going strong despite doing something he has previously never done as a professional. His Opening Day start was his first at any professional level in his four-plus years since being drafted, and he has amassed 101⅓ innings, 16 more than he had totaled in the regular season previously in his pro career, and only 13 fewer than said entering-2024 total if including his spring training and postseason work.
Crochet finds himself on pace for more than 190 innings, a whopping 125 inning increase compared to his single-year best of 65, which came as a member of college’s Tennessee Volunteers in 2019, and an increase of 104⅔ upon his prior regular-season professional career total.
If Crochet maintains this pace, he’d become only the third pitcher in the past eight non-shortened seasons to pitch at least 190 innings despite entering the year with fewer than 100 in his big league career, joining Sandy Alcantara (2019) and Jerad Eickhoff (2016). Both Alcantara and Eickhoff, however, had prior-year totals between the majors and minors that were within 37 innings, so it’s not like either’s workload was spiking in the way that Crochet’s has. In fact, the most recent pitcher I could find who pitched 190-plus innings in a season and had as little professional work as Crochet entering that year was Rolando Arrojo, who defected from Cuba two years before pitching 202 innings for the 1998 Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
Realistically, there’s almost no chance that Crochet will hit that 190-inning threshold, and the distance he falls short will have a substantial bearing on his fantasy value the remainder of the year. The White Sox have already publicly hinted they have a plan for reining in his innings, though they’re also heavily rumored to be shopping him, after failing to come to a contract extension with the left-hander.
Any acquiring team will surely have similar workload concerns with Crochet, complicating any possible extension talks tied to a prospective deal, though such a trade would at least enhance his prospects of a larger innings total due to the probability of meaningful September games. He’s plenty capable of delivering a top-15 fantasy point average over his remaining starts, but will he make another 15, eight or maybe fewer?
Now is the ideal time to trade Crochet, if you can land a pitcher likely to come close to that top-15 positional valuation, with a greater probability of logging more innings. At his position alone, Sonny Gray, Mitch Keller and Bailey Ober are three players I’d prefer to Crochet from this point forward.
Crochet isn’t alone in this heavily worked class. Here’s a look at five other pitchers whose seasonal paces should alarm fantasy managers:
Paul Skenes/Jared Jones, Pittsburgh Pirates: On pace for 154 and 166 innings, these dazzling rookies aren’t in the flat-out panic level of workload concern, but you can be sure that the Pirates will keep a close eye on their totals during the second half. Yes, they’re within striking distance of a National League wild card spot, with their contributions critical to the team’s competitive fortunes, but it’s unlikely either pitcher will be pressed beyond 150 frames, or 20-25 beyond their 2023 totals (in Skenes’ case, including his college work). Skenes, for example, has yet to work on fewer than five days’ rest since his promotion, while Jones has worked on four days’ rest in only two of his 15 starts. Skenes’ production and raw skills, however, make him someone who should command a near-equal trade package to Crochet.
Luis Gil, New York Yankees: A pitcher discussed in this space five weeks ago, Gil’s numbers have already begun tumbling, his ERA 14.90 in his past three starts as he moved within 23 innings of his pro-career best of 108⅔, set in 2021. At the time, with a near-three quarters of the season remaining, Gil (and the similarly cited Crochet) made more sense as keep-’em-around types than those to trade, but as the summer progresses, the calls for reining in their innings will only grow louder. It might be too late to trade Gil for a premium return, with a borderline top-40 fantasy starter — a Chris Bassitt or Blake Snell type — most realistic.
Tanner Houck, Boston Red Sox: The oldest of these pitchers, Houck has still never exceeded 119 innings in any of 10 professional seasons, as injuries and the Red Sox shuffling him between the rotation and bullpen have held him back, especially at the big-league level. He’s fourth in baseball in innings pitched, on pace for 208, which would be an astonishing total even for a 28-year-old with his experience. Houck is coming off the worst start of his season, meaning it might make sense to wait for his next positive outing before trying to swap him.
Tarik Skubal, Detroit Tigers: Another pitcher who falls into both the innings-cap and trade-candidate categories, Skubal has more fantasy points than any other pitcher, as well as the 16th-most innings pitched, since this date one year ago, but in the year that preceded that, he totaled only 48⅓ frames. Considering injuries held him back during the latter period, not to mention he has never exceeded 149⅓ frames in a single professional season, Skubal is a pitcher the Tigers are sure to monitor carefully. He’s a tough pitcher to trade, because his valuation is understandably and reasonably within the position’s top eight, but it’s fair to question whether he has the stamina to maintain his year-to-date performance.
Pitchers who could thrive during the second half
Taking the reverse approach to the workload-management question, these three pitchers have both the raw skill and reasonable innings paces to perhaps step up with surprisingly elite second halves of 2024.
Justin Steele, Chicago Cubs: A hamstring strain cost him five-plus weeks earlier in the year, but he has six quality starts and a 1.80 ERA in his past seven outings, and underlying metrics that are as good as (and in some cases better than) those from his 2023 season, in which he scored the 20th-most fantasy points among starting pitchers. With some luck in the injury department, he might well continue performing in that top-20 positional tier from this point forward.
Bobby Miller, Los Angeles Dodgers: His first half was ruined by injuries, and he hasn’t looked quite himself in two starts since his return from the injured list. That said, Miller has some of the best raw stuff in baseball, and the absences made it highly likely he’ll face no restrictions the rest of the way, pitching for a team that is currently in near-desperate need of starting pitching depth. Miller’s range of outcomes is wide, but to demonstrate his upside, over the final three months of his rookie 2023, he scored the 29th-most fantasy points among starting pitchers.
Bryan Woo, Seattle Mariners: He has made two trips to the injured list for arm issues in the past 11 months, and is currently sidelined with a hamstring strain, so it’d be understandable if fantasy managers won’t go anywhere near him. That said, Woo has been outstanding between those IL stints, with a 2.45 ERA and 0.90 WHIP that both rank in the top five among pitchers who have made at least as many as his 15 starts. He might be the best speculative trade target at his position.
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