Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet tries to make sense of an achingly slow rehab process

It’s been more than two months since Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet landed on the injured list with what was described as mild left shoulder inflammation, and more than a month since he last threw a baseball. And so it is natural to wonder: Is there a more serious injury in play?

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Crochet, who is admittedly bewildered by the amount of time he’s missed, understood why the question was asked — but waved off the notion of a larger issue.

“I don’t think I’m at risk of surgery, if that’s what you’re asking,” Crochet said genially.

Crochet was asked to clarify further: Surgery is not part of the conversation about his needed course of treatment?

“Correct,” said Crochet. “I’m structurally fine.”

So why has it taken him so long to return to pitching? To answer that question, the lefthander — who turned 27 last week — rewound to the offseason.

Crochet threw a career-high 213 innings between the regular season and playoffs in 2025, a 46 percent increase of workload from the previous season with the White Sox. When he started throwing in the offseason, Crochet realized with hindsight he was navigating lingering fatigue.

“I was still kind of experiencing that hangover from last year, and once I started throwing again, maybe my mechanics just weren’t in a great spot,” said Crochet. “And then as the buildup occurred, that just continued to get further from the norm.”

While working out, Crochet was getting to typical velocities, but he now recognizes that his body was likely creating “compensation patterns” to take stress off the rotator cuff after last year’s demands. Out-of-whack mechanics stressed different areas around his shoulder, such as the ligaments of the shoulder capsule.

He didn’t feel discomfort or acute pain, but noticed some puzzling developments — particularly an unusual string of hit batters. Crochet clipped three hitters in all of 2025; he drilled two in spring training and four more in April. Of those six HBPs, four came on fastballs.

“I was just having misses that aren’t typical to me,” said Crochet. “It was like, ‘What the [expletive] is going on?’ ”

Biomechanical changes started to become evident to the Sox, including the tilt of his hips, which in turn changed the position of his arm angle relative to the ground. His body was trying to position itself to throw the ball with typical power and effect, but that search resulted in inconsistency — outings where he dominated (two outings of six scoreless frames) and others where he had nothing (1⅔ innings, 11 runs vs. the Twins). That inconsistency contributed to a 6.30 ERA in six starts.

Finally, shoulder discomfort entered the equation in late April, and he was put on the injured list. The soreness went away relatively quickly, and so he started throwing aggressively again by mid-May.

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But his mechanics still weren’t right, resulting in a frustrating bullpen session in Kansas City. He rebounded with what he saw as an encouraging live batting practice session against teammates at Fenway on May 26, but again, atypical mechanics created mild soreness in his lat muscle.

“[The injury doesn’t trace] to a certain point. It was kind of just a gradual effect of different mechanics that the body’s not used to,” said Crochet. “It had been months of throwing improperly. It’s gonna take a little bit of time to I guess rework the throw or rework the movement pattern.”

Crochet and the Sox are now slow-playing his buildup. He’s been throwing “overload” plyo balls — heavier-than-normal baseballs, so that he builds shoulder strength but with less arm speed to minimize injury risk — to re-train his rotator cuff.

“Right now, it’s just trying to break it down to proper mechanics, letting the right muscles fire at the right time and perform the right task,” said Crochet.

It’s not fun watching paint dry, and Crochet is struggling with the restrictions of the rehab process. But he’s pain-free and sees progress — even if he doesn’t know when the Sox will green-light him to start playing catch.

“I don’t think we’re being overly cautious. I just think that we’re being cautious, the way you should be,” said Crochet. “I’m 27. I’ve got a lot of baseball left. I’ve got a lot of baseball left here. Thankfully, I’m protected by signing a contract last year with this team, so they kind of have a reason to take care of me.”

Crochet is grateful to have that six-year, $170 million extension he signed at the start of last season. He believes it freed him to focus on baseball and emerge as one of the sport’s top pitchers in 2025. Now, it’s also removed the anxiety of navigating a free-agent walk year while on the injured list.

That said, the contract also came with a sense of responsibility to the team and organization.

“That’s the tough part about right now,” he said. “You feel not pressure, but more just an ethical obligation. It’s like, I need to [expletive] get back because I’m not being paid to sit on the bench or sit on the IL and just kind of waste away as the season’s going.

“But also, I’m gonna be here for a long time, and so I have to make sure that I can throw the rest of it healthy as soon as I’m back.”

He feels he’s making the needed progress to do just that — even if not at the pace he’d expected or hoped for when this odyssey began.

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