Workload management comes for Garrett Crochet, just in time for trade deadline

The Chicago White Sox have a plan for Garrett Crochet and his workload for the remainder of the season.

But what’s their plan for keeping, or not keeping, him on their roster?

The big left-hander has been absolutely phenomenal this season, rating as one of baseball’s best pitchers in his first season as a big league starter. His transition from the bullpen to the rotation was met with ample skepticism during spring training. He’s silenced any doubters with one dominant performance after another, all while showing no signs of any negative physical effects caused by an enhanced workload.

But that workload, which has been a talking point all season long, will come under greater scrutiny moving forward, with Pedro Grifol saying Tuesday that the team plans to dial Crochet back a tad.

“We’re going to start dwindling his workload down a little bit, and we’ll manage that correctly,” the manager said. “It’s not something we’re going to put out and say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing,’ because nothing in this game is black and white. He might have five innings where he goes 12 pitches or less and we might let him go six or seven innings, even when we’re trying to minimize his workload. It all depends on what he does.

“But we have a plan in place, we have a blueprint in place.”

Certainly that has begun to show itself, with Grifol lifting Crochet in the middle of a scoreless outing against the fearsome Dodgers a night earlier, bringing out the hook with two outs in the sixth inning and Crochet at 91 pitches. A start prior, Crochet only got to 85 pitches before he was lifted.

The White Sox have had this in mind all season long, stating early in the year that their intent was to avoid having to shut Crochet down at any point before the end of the season. Grifol has talked repeatedly about navigating what he commonly refers to as “uncharted waters” with Crochet and attempting to buy him pitches, innings, starts and days of rest as often as possible.

With a goal to avoid a shutdown, the White Sox might limit Crochet’s pitches or innings, as they have in recent starts. They might skip a start here or there. They might give him more than four days of rest between outings, as much as Crochet enjoys staying in a five-day routine.

In a lost season, that might be easier to do than in one where wins would be critical to securing a playoff berth, and that could allow the White Sox to develop Crochet into the top-of-the-rotation ace that he’s looked like through three months on the job.

“We’re all in this thing together when it comes to Garrett,” Grifol said after Monday night’s game, an eventual 3-0 loss. “That wasn’t a strategic move. Who wants to take Garrett Crochet out of a baseball game that’s 0-0? It’s not a strategic move.

“We have to control the workload. We have to manage the workload. This is a part of it. This kid threw less than 30 innings last year. He’s on pace right now for 170, 180 innings, if he continues to go. We’re going to continue to work on his workload management.

“Obviously, he’s a big-time competitor, that’s why he is who he is and one of the top five starters in the game right now. I want him to be pissed off when he comes out of the game. I want him to.”

Crochet was far from pissed by the time he talked with reporters after the game. A guy who has shown nothing but supreme confidence in himself all year is starting to get the picture: that the White Sox aren’t going to let him pitch till his arm falls off — even if that’s the way he’d prefer to go out.

“I vouch for myself as much as I can. I think that I could throw 130 pitches and be cool. That’s how I felt like I was tonight,” Crochet said after Monday’s outing. “But with where the innings are at, I definitely understand where everybody’s coming from, trying to monitor things.

“I want to pitch every game like it’s going to be my last. I don’t really want to take my foot off the gas for a second. But I understand.”

Maybe the White Sox will end up nailing this strategy for a guy in his first year as a starting pitcher, a guy who threw a relatively tiny amount in his first few years as a pro and a guy who had Tommy John surgery two years ago.

But here’s a question: Aren’t they trying to trade him?

“Trying” is probably a little too severe of a phrasing. Chris Getz seems open to moving just about anyone before the trade deadline in an effort to infuse as much young talent as possible into his rebuilding project. Open for business and shopping guys are two different things.

But indeed, it seems Crochet could be moved, despite the idea that he’s the kind of player rebuilding teams dream of, a young, controllable starting pitcher with ace potential. Given the amount of work Getz has to do to turn the White Sox around, though, perhaps not even the two years they control Crochet after this season are enough to make keeping him a better idea than getting as much as possible back in a trade, something that’s helping put Crochet’s name in the national trade conversation.

We’ll see if any team is interested in meeting what’s likely a steep asking price for a guy who might start the All-Star Game. That more than anything drives the likelihood of a Crochet trade, as well as a trade involving Luis Robert Jr.

Those other teams might not see what the White Sox have witnessed: an outrageously determined and talented pitcher willing himself from the bullpen to the top of a major league rotation. They might have the same questions plenty of fans have had all year long, those regarding Crochet’s ability to physically handle the jump. Still, the idea of having Crochet for not one, not two, but three runs at a World Series figures to be pretty intriguing, too. He leads the AL with 130 strikeouts, and his 3.05 ERA in 17 starts this season is only bested by the 1.53 ERA he has in his last 11 starts.

Whether or not the publicizing of a plan, however nonspecific, to downshift Crochet’s workload dings the desire for teams to part with their most prized prospects remains to be seen. At the very least, though, it speaks to the White Sox harboring similar concerns, if you can call them that. They’re being precautious, at the very least, and feel a need to be.

It’s not as dire as Crochet being unable to pitch reliably past the end of September, calling into question why any contender would want to acquire him at all. But if the White Sox, well out of the running to play in October, are doing everything they can to get Crochet to the end of the regular season, what sort of plan would an acquiring contender have to implement to confidently get Crochet to the end of an extra month?

It’s an interesting aspect to not only what the rest of Crochet’s 2024 looks like but what the White Sox might be able to do at the trade deadline.

As Grifol keeps saying with the seeming unicorn Crochet, these are uncharted waters.

[MORE SOX: Eight White Sox players, ranked by how likely they are to be traded]

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