Garrett Crochette wasn’t on the radar when he began extension week in March, which was understandable, as Crochette had never made a single start in the major leagues.
Four months later, Crochet has emerged as the best starter available on the trade market and is reportedly seeking a contract extension, making it a very rare opportunity for an extension to be worth projecting in July.
For any player who has never been a free agent, the first step in figuring out what his contract extension will entail is figuring out how much he’ll earn in arbitration. This season, his first year of arbitration, Crochette made just $800,000, barely above the league minimum. That’s because he didn’t have the track record to claim more. Coming into this season, Crochette had pitched a total of 73 innings in the major leagues.
For Crochette, that small arbitrage 1 number will resonate for the next two years. Crochette won’t earn as much as pitchers like David Price or Jacob deGrom, who started at a much higher level. In this respect, Crochette is similar to Zack Wheeler, who also missed playing time as a pre-arbitrage player and therefore made relatively little before becoming a free agent. Wheeler made $800,000 in his first year of arbitrage and only made $8.7 million total over the three years of arbitrage.
Crochet is on track to do better than that — Wheeler was making $800,000 but was less effective — but Crochet’s total earnings through 2026 will likely be in the $10 million to $15 million range.
To get an idea of how much Crochette should be valued on the open market, let’s compare him to another pitcher who signed a contract extension after having a great season.
player
Year
IP
Era
kg%
BB%
FWAR
2022
131 2/3
2.67
38.3%
8.5%
4.9
2024
111 1/3
3.07
35.4%
5.6%
4.1
Spencer Strider was set to become a free agent in five years, not two like Crochette, and his six-year, $75 million extension essentially valued one season of bought-out free agency at roughly $32 million.
Crochet will become a free agent at age 28, which is unusually early for a first-line starting pitcher. Another interesting question is how many years into the free agent period a team plans to buy Crochet out. The Dodgers signed a 12-year contract with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who has never pitched in the major leagues, to keep him at 36 years old. Will a team that acquires Crochet bet on him for that long, an 11-year contract?
Unlikely. A shorter extension might actually make more sense for Crochet, one that buys out three years of free agency, allowing him to hit the free agent market before his age-31 season and recapitalize. So let’s project a three-year extension in the $32 million price range to buy out three years of free agency and line it up with our previous arbitration estimates.
Combined, the five-year extension is worth $110 million.
(Photo of Garrett Crochet by Ron Vesely/Getty Images)