3 things to know about new Red Sox pitcher Cooper Criswell
Acquiring pitching is the first item on Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow to-do list this offseason, and he made his first foray into the market this week.
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The Sox agreed to a one-year deal with righthander Cooper Criswell on Tuesday. Criswell most recently pitched for the Rays before he was designated for assignment in November.
Here are a few things to know about Boston’s potential bullpen arm.
He has a funky delivery.
Criswell is far from the hardest thrower in the game, with his fastball sitting at 88 miles per hour with some sinking action. He instead relies on an unconventional delivery to help keep hitters off balance, releasing from a low three-quarters arm slot that gives him significant extension from a 6-foot-6-inch frame.
Criswell’s motion isn’t quite as unusual as that of new teammate John Schreiber, with a little less bending and torso movement than the hard-throwing Schreiber, but he’s another righthander who will give batters an unusual look on the bump.
He releases the ball close to 7 feet from the mound, which put him in the 90th percentile league-wide last season according to Statcast data, which helps compensate for his lack of raw velocity.
He’s a junior college product.
After a standout high school career in Georgia, Criswell went the junior college route with two seasons at Southern Union State Community College in Wadley, Ala. He posted a 10-1 record with a 2.54 ERA and six complete games as a sophomore.
He impressed enough there to earn a scholarship at North Carolina, where he went 6-2 with a 2.99 ERA in his lone season in Chapel Hill to help the Tar Heels to the second round of the College World Series.
He’s moving up north for the first time.
Criswell will have some adjusting to do when it comes time for him to move to New England.
After spending his entire amateur career in the South, and as a Georgia native who attended junior college in Alabama before playing Division 1 baseball in North Carolina, Criswell found himself still in warm-weather climates as a professional.
He was selected in the 13th round of the 2018 MLB Draft by the Los Angeles Angels, and save for a brief stint with Triple A affiliate in Salt Lake City in the summer and early fall of 2021, he wasn’t far from home in the minors.
Criswell split much of 2021 and 2022 between the Triple A Durham Bulls in North Carolina, just a few miles from Chapel Hill, and the Double A Rocket City Trash Pandas — that is a real minor league baseball team — in Madison, Ala., just a couple hours’ drive from his hometown in Carrollton, Georgia.
At the major-league level, he’s pitched only for the Angels and the Tampa Bay Rays.
Whether Criswell finds himself primarily in Boston or Worcester this season, he won’t have long to adjust to the New England weather.
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