Zen And The Art Of Fantasy Baseball: A Disinterested Look At Garrett Crochet’s Start To 2026

The Moment of Zen:

Last week, I discussed meditation and a couple of its potential positive consequences. This week, I’ll work with a closely-related topic.

One of the goals of meditation is to cultivate a sense of disinterestedness – that is, an understanding of how the current moment actually is, not what we hope or fear it might be. I’ve referred to this aspect before, but let’s explore the idea a bit more deeply.

Disinterestedness is not the same as not being interested, being bored, or not caring. In fact, disinterestedness is a way to demonstrate absolute interest, absolute focus. Boredom would imply a lack of engagement with something, but disinterested is true engagement with whatever is in front of us. The only way to see things as they actually are is to stop assessing those things with a goal in mind. 

If I, for instance, were to examine my day job, that of a high school teacher, to see whether I’m truly practicing Right Livelihood, the fifth step of the Eightfold Path, I would need to assess my process and actions while empty of any expectations or hopes of what I might find. If I secretly hope that I am fulfilling Right Livelihood and am not participating in the career for selfish reasons, whatever those may be, I cannot get a true sense of whether I am actually meeting the standards I would expect of myself. You might correctly assume that anyone going through such an assessment would hope they are, indeed, practicing Right Livelihood – after all, who wouldn’t want to believe they are working without selfishness or hope of a gain that might come at the expense of others? And I fully admit: there is no doubt that I do hope that I am teaching for the right reasons. But in the assessment, it is essential to somehow remove that desire, to reach a level of disinterestedness that would allow me to see my work as it truly is – despite my undeniable hopes of doing things the “right” way.

This process is, of course, easier said than done. Meditation allows for this possibility of disinterestedness by helping us train our minds to absorb, without interpretation, what we are examining instead of forcing meaning or intentions where they don’t belong. 

How in the world does this apply to fantasy baseball?

I don’t know about you, but when I play fantasy, I want to win. When I’m high on a player, I want to be right. Particularly, when I write about a player, implicitly giving advice to my readers, I almost desperately want to be right. And if I allow myself to assess players and even make recommendations based only on what I want to happen, I would obviously have very little chance of being objective. 

And I assure you – I don’t claim to be purely objective: I know that my desires seep into my assessments. Does my desire for Brenton Doyle to have a great rebound season the year after he suffered personal tragedy affect the way I view his chances of actually rebounding? Probably. I try not to let my human side stand in the way of my analysis, but there’s no way I’m completely successful. When I watch Jose Altuve, am I able to separate the player he still is from my image of trashcan man due to Houston’s “Sign-gate”? No chance. But I am aware of the need to try to work around my biases the best I can, for whatever that’s worth.

That awareness of our likely biases is maybe the best we can do – we can’t remove our human nature after all. But the more we can practice being as without opinion – or as disinterested – as possible, the better fantasy players we’ll be.

Garrett Crochet:

This week, I attempt to turn a disinterested eye to Garrett Crochet. In my drafts, I often found myself picking between 11 and 15, meaning that my player choices once my pick came up usually included hitters like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Kyle Tucker, and Francisco Lindor. I’m high on all 3 of those guys, so I was happy to choose one of them. But I had a late pick in many of my drafts, well over 50% of the leagues I’m in, so I didn’t feel like I should draft the same guys every time. That led me to look more seriously at late RD1 pitchers than I have in the past, and Crochet was the stud pitcher most often available in the late 1st. Let’s just say I have a number of Crochet shares. And that hasn’t been great to start the season, as the pitcher I expected to be so good has been anything but. 

Is he broken? That’s what I set out to discover, and here’s what I found.

Note: All information below was written prior to Crochet’s scheduled start on Sunday, April 19th.

Crochet’s stat line is troubling enough, and one of the first places I looked didn’t exactly look promising for the pitcher:

Such a precipitous drop in K% and resulting loss in K-BB% (my go-to stat for pitchers) made me think that an injury might be to blame. If Crochet is nursing an injury and trying to pitch through it, his K numbers would be down (as they are), and likely so would his velocity and spin, and he would likely choose to throw pitches that would give him less physical stress. So let’s see what’s happening there:

In looking at the K% column, all 3 of his fastballs (4-sm, cutter, and sinker) are way down in terms of induced Ks. But the velocities of those pitches aren’t markedly different, especially considering the early-season cold weather.

The pitch choice is informative:

Though Crochet dropped his 4-seamer usage in 2025, from 54% to 36%, I don’t buy that another drop down to 26% in 2026 is intentional. Add the fact that his cutter usage was steady at 28%, but now it’s up to 32% – not a significant jump, but in context might relate to the 4-seamer dip. What is that context? His sinker usage: very low in 2024 (2%) but with a clear usage bump in 2025 (up to 16%), suggesting he got a lot more comfortable with that pitch. Why does that matter? If his sinker usage is up again (which it is, up to 24% in 2026), that suggests to me that, for whatever reason, he’s lost confidence in his 4-seamer. Why?

Looking at his Zone% adds more context:

His 4-seamer, in 2024, found the zone 60.8% of the time, with a slight dip to 57.1% in 2025, and now a massive drop down to 46.5% so far this season. Hitters are swinging at his 4-seamer 8% more than last season, and when that pitch gets in the zone, it’s getting tagged: the Z-Contact% on the 4-seam is 87.1% (up 6%), and his overall 4-seam Contact% is also up (7%). Hmm. His cutter is following a similar path, missing the zone more often and getting hit more often, whether in the zone or not. His sinker is also missing the zone more often – though he’s having success despite his lack of control, with contact on the cutter well down. His slider is giving up 16% more contact.

The verdict: 

I get it – I’ve thrown a ton of numbers out, but do they mean anything? I think so. 

Looking at his movement, he’s getting more movement with almost every pitch. I’m no expert, but his velo is basically the same, his movement is better, and he’s missing the zone much more often. His velo consistency and the amount of movement makes me think injury isn’t the issue. Phew. Then, in looking at his spin metrics for each pitch, a pattern might reveal itself: His spin on every pitch except his changeup is way down. But I’ve already said there are too many physical aspects of his pitching that haven’t dropped off (most notably velocity), so I don’t think the spin problem is related to injury.

So what is it?  I think his big problem is he’s lost control of his pitches, but that is probably just a feel issue that will be corrected fairly quickly. I suspect due to the cold, he just isn’t feeling the ball as well, so he’s compensating by trying to create more movement, causing him to miss the zone. When he does pitch in the zone, he’s probably taking something off the ball to do so, causing his pitches to get hit more often.

So… I think I’m not worried about Crochet. In fact, I think I’m headed out to make some folks offers for their Crochet shares.

Now the question: Is my assessment based on the data or based on what I want the data to mean? Unfortunately, I can’t be sure of the answer. I’m aware of my bias and trying to overcome it – I hope that’s enough.

Good luck as you make your decisions on Crochet. And until next week. –ADHamley