The proposal is that when using the crop tool, holding Ctrl enters rotate mode and holding Alt causes the crop region to scale about the centre point, and the mousewheel will change the rotation / scale, as with Speed Edits.
The proposal is a simple addition to allow the mousewheel to control rotation when Ctrl is held and Scale when Alt is held.
We already have Speed Edit involving keypress+wheel as an interface paradigm, and if adding too many Speed Edit keys (Such as rotation, as suggested in a separate ticket) is too much, then adding wheel augmentation to tools could be a workaround.