It’s common to debate which team won or lost a trade for a while after the fact, and for the first time since their team traded Garrett Crochet to the Red Sox in December, White Sox fans got a chance to see him in the visiting team’s uniform and ask themselves that question.
Into the eighth inning, it looked disastrous. Crochet was perfect through five innings and had a no-hitter with five outs to go, racking up 11 strikeouts along the way to a 3-1 loss for the White Sox. But, fittingly, Chase Meidroth — one of the players who came over from Boston in the Crochet trade — broke up the no-hitter with an eighth-inning single past shortstop Trevor Story.
That moment probably means more to White Sox fans than it does to Meidroth himself; he described the poetics of getting the first hit of the game against the guy he was traded for as “just baseball.”
“He’s a good arm. I tried to get something out over the plate,” Meidroth said. “I tried to not chase too much. Can’t give a guy like that anything extra.”
His hit set up a potential rally; he ended up scoring, and the White Sox got two more runners in scoring position with a chance to tie or take the lead in the eighth inning, but their comeback bid fell short.
In a season where the organization is being assessed on whether or not they are truly turning the corner of the rebuild process, a Meidroth base hit can feel like a small step in the right direction. So can another solid outing from starter Shane Smith, who the Sox picked up from the Milwaukee Brewers in the Rule 5 draft on the same day they completed the trade that sent Crochet to Boston.
Smith pitched six two-run innings for his second quality start in a row and the second time he has gone six full innings this season. Getting that deep into the game is a significant step for the 25-year-old rookie making just his third career start. Smith said he was not in the strike zone as much on Sunday has his previous starts, but he came away from his start against the Red Sox with a clear sense for what it will take to go even deeper into his outings.
“I think the biggest thing was just finishing the sixth feeling stronger,” Smith said. “Pretty low pitch count going into the sixth, and I think if I keep the walks down then I hopefully go back up in the seventh.”
Doing that will take figuring out the right mix for his secondary pitches. Smith has an impressive changeup that has kept hitters off balance thus far, and he said his curveball and changeup didn’t feel quite right in Sunday’s start, so he leaned more heavily on his slider, which helped him navigate through the Red Sox order three times.
“He had enough with the fastball and the slider to be really, really effective,” manager Will Venable said. “I think he’s just finding different ways to get guys out. Having an understanding of what he has that day and I thought today was a great example of that.”
Like the Meidroth single in the eighth inning, Smith making these kinds of in-game adjustments is a small sign of the right kind of progress. The White Sox have a long way to go from losing over 120 games last season, but a part of what it’s going to take to put that behind them is having players like Meidroth and Smith come through and keep making progress.
There’s a case to be made that Crochet should have been signed to an extension and kept in the White Sox organization, but that’s not the direction the front office decided to take. While they still had tradable assets, they chose to deal them. That process might not be over — if Luis Robert, Jr. finds his bat again he very likely will be dealt later this summer — but the Crochet trade was probably the last significant piece to be moved for a sizable return.
Crochet said he tried thinking of the White Sox as just any other opponent on Sunday, even as his no-hit bid progressed. Hard to do given the circumstances, especially because he made this start in his old home ballpark. Past experience helped him in this game, however.
“I feel like I got burned a couple times doing that last year,” Crochet said. “Facing specific teams and maybe over-amping, or trying to keep myself as neutral as possible. And I feel like the best way to do it is just be even-keeled throughout the game.”
That’s hardly a solace to White Sox fans, though. Seeing Crochet thrive is fine, as long as the players who came to Chicago in the trade are doing the same thing. Meidroth was called up on Friday and has been very impressive so far; he has a 1.029 OPS and has reached base safely in all three games he’s played. The other three players in the trade are all still in the minors. Kyle Teel is batting just .192 for Triple-A Charlotte, Braden Montgomery has a .313 batting average but is all the way down in Single-A Kannapolis, and Wikelman Gonzalez has only pitched a few innings with Double-A Birmingham. It will take more than a few games to gauge whether the White Sox made the right decision with Crochet.
If guys like Meidroth and Smith keep doing the kinds of things they have in the small sample size of this season, then good things will happen. The White Sox almost certainly won’t lose as many games as they did in 2024, and fans can start feeling better about moves like the Garrett Crochet trade.
