Red Sox Air-Drop Garrett Crochet Into Wild Card Roster After Five-Month Absence

Garrett Crochet is officially on the Boston Red Sox Wild Card roster, which is objectively hilarious considering the guy hasn't thrown a major league pitch since most of us were still wearing winter coats.

MLB Trade Rumors dropped the news Tuesday, confirming Boston is actually going to roll out their former Cy Young runner-up as a postseason bullpen weapon.

"MLB Trade Rumors confirmed Garrett Crochet is included on the Red Sox' Wild Card Roster."

For context, Crochet hasn't touched a big-league mound since April 25 thanks to a wrecked left shoulder capsule. Instead of packing it in for the winter, he spent the last five months rehabbing just to throw live batting practice in Florida last week. Now he is being air-dropped directly into a playoff series against the New York Yankees.

Last year, Crochet walked into Yankee Stadium for Game 1 of the Wild Card and threw 117 pitches with 11 strikeouts. Expecting that exact guy to walk through the bullpen doors is like expecting your college laptop to run a modern video game just because it worked great in 2019. He is not stretched out for a start, meaning he is strictly a relief arm.

The Red Sox are sitting as -160 favorites against New York in this series, and throwing a total wild card like Crochet into the mix only makes the board weirder. Anyone trying to handicap Boston's late-game pitching now has to factor in a guy who might throw pure unhittable gas or might have absolutely no idea where the ball is going.

Boston heads to the Bronx to kick off the series on September 30. We will find out very quickly if activating a guy who hasn't pitched in five months is a masterstroke of roster management or a desperate gamble that completely detonates in the seventh inning.