It’s kind of scary to think but Garrett Crochet could have been even better than he was in 2025.

Crochet finished the season with a 2.59 ERA and 255 strikeouts in 205 1/3 innings pitched. He placed second in the AL Cy Young voting and eighth in the AL MVP voting.

The idea that he could have been better stems from this: Crochet allowed 24 home runs. But by our expected stats measurement tools, he was expected to allow only 18 based on the batted ball type, where the ball was hit and how hard it was hit.

A brief point of explanation:

Sports Info Solutions tracks its own version of a player’s expected stats (similar to what you can find on Baseball Savant). Rather than basing a player’s hit probability (and therefore single, double, triple, and home run probability) on a batted ball’s exit velocity and launch angle, SIS’ version estimates probabilities based on where balls are hit, how hard they are hit, and how long they spend in the air.

This allows us to compare a player’s actual stats to his expected stats to see if they fared better or worse than perhaps they could have.

Some examples for Crochet include:

A front-row home run to right field at Steinbrenner Field by Rays shortstop Carson Williams (LINK), and front-row shots over the Green Monster in left field by Byron Buxton (LINK) and Amed Rosario (LINK).

Crochet had a .617 OPS against in 2025, which ranked 18th-lowest (minimum 400 batters faced). His expected OPS of .553 was the lowest among that same set of pitchers.

Logan Webb of the Giants experienced something similar with doubles. He allowed 49, 14 more than his expected total. Webb got the worst defensive support on the batted balls against him of any pitcher in baseball. Here’s two examples of balls that could have been caught that turned into doubles (LINK, LINK), both missed by Giants left fielder Heliot Ramos.

Crochet and Webb are two of the headline names on our list of pitchers who underachieved the most in 2025. In this case, we’re defining underachieved as yielding an OPS higher than our stats expected. Another is recent Blue Jays free agent signee Dylan Cease, whom we previously wrote about for the lack of defensive support that the Padres gave him last season. He ranked second to Webb in terms of least defensive support gotten on batted balls.

Here’s the list of pitchers who underachieved by the largest amounts OPS-wise.

Biggest Differential – Actual OPS and Expected OPS in 2025

Minimum 400 Batters Faced

 Antonio Senzatela of the Rockies tops this list. He had the worst OPS allowed in MLB (.949) but he wasn’t much better by expected OPS. His .855 was the fourth-highest.

Phillies starter Aaron Nola was right behind Senzatela. He had a 6.01 ERA during the regular season and his .805 OPS against was 15th-highest, but his .715 expected OPS allowed was almost right in the middle of the pool of 135 pitchers (61st-highest). Nola’s season was nowhere near his usual standards, but it also seems like it wasn’t as bad as it looked

Guardians pitcher Tanner Bibee’s season also fell into that category. His .720 OPS against was 56 points higher than his expected OPS. The latter, .664, ranked in the 77th percentile among this group of pitchers (31st overall).

Seven of the 10 pitchers on last year’s list of biggest underachievers had lower ERAs in 2025 than they did in 2024, though a couple changed roles and became relievers (Reid Detmers and Chris Flexen).

The biggest ‘hit’ among the 2024 underachievers was Hunter Brown, whose ERA dropped from 3.49 to 2.43, though you could make a case that you could have seen that coming with the way he closed the 2024 season. Others whose ERA improved significantly from 2024 to 2025 were Taijuan Walker and Logan Allen.

As we’ve said with each of these articles, caveats apply. If you’re on the list of underachievers, you’re not guaranteed to be better in 2026. You still have to go out there and inevitably get some outs in difficult situations.