After four-pitch washout, Garrett Crochet has eyes on finishing season, even if it’s with short starts

Garrett Crochet’s most recent start for the Chicago White Sox lasted just four pitches.

But this wasn’t the White Sox’ doing as they continue to shrink the amount of innings and pitches their prized All-Star starting pitcher racks up from outing to outing.

No, this was workload management courtesy of Mother Nature.

Crochet took the mound Tuesday night for his 27th start of the season thinking he’d have a dry hour and a half to get in whatever work the team would allow him. But the rains came early, and by the time “play ball” rolled around, it was already pouring.

Four pitches later, a delay. After rolling downpours for an hour-plus, a suspension. And Crochet’s latest start was officially done.

“Throwing in the rain is one of those things I secretly enjoy,” the big lefty said a day later. “I’m like, ‘The hitters must be miserable right now.’ But then when I didn’t have a grip on that last pitch, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m kind of miserable right now.’

“It was frustrating in the moment, for sure. It’s one of those things you can’t control, and that’s pretty much what I preach any time something out of my hands goes wrong.”

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Crochet has done something pretty much no one thought he would when the White Sox granted him permission to compete for a rotation spot in the spring, not just vaulting from relatively inexperienced reliever to a starter but doing it without any ill physical effects and doing it at an All-Star level.

But increasingly, more and more has been taken out of his hands. And though Crochet has proven doubters wrong at every turn, there’s still nothing but questions about what comes next.

He caused a league-wide stir when it became known before the trade deadline that he had no intention of returning to a bullpen role and required a contract extension from any acquiring team in order to pitch in the postseason. He stayed with the White Sox — who are expected to revisit those trade conversations this offseason — and has seen his workload shrink dramatically, kept mostly to four innings a game since the start of the second half.

Now it’s a wonder how much he’ll pitch during the final month of the season, or if the White Sox plan to shut him down and preserve their most valuable trade chip as Chris Getz’s slow-moving rebuilding project rolls on this winter.

Interim manager Grady Sizemore raised the possibility of a Crochet shutdown in recent days, but later answers revealed that as pure speculation on his part.

“I’m just speculating, I don’t know,” Sizemore said Wednesday. “We haven’t talked about it. I know he feels good, he wants to finish the season and not miss any starts. I’m going to plan as if he’s going every five days like he’s been doing until I hear otherwise.

“I definitely want him to pitch, and I think it would be good for him, too, if he could get through the whole season and finish throwing on normal five-day rest. But we also want what’s best for him and want him to stay healthy.

“If it gets to that point where it’s the last week, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw something like that, like him missing another start. For now, we’re just going about it like he’s going every five days.”

Meanwhile, the uber-confident Crochet has unsurprisingly stayed committed to completing a full starter’s workload, at least when it comes to making 30-plus starts and sticking to a five-day starter’s routine.

“For me, in the conversations I’ve had with Chris and the rest of the staff, it’s been (about) undergoing a typical starter’s workload in terms of getting through the entire year,” Crochet said Wednesday. “I think that pitching in September is huge, just for the mindset of having truly pitched through the whole season.

“Since the All-Star break, in terms of workload, it’s dwindled down, but at the same time, I’m still going every fifth day. And I think that going every fifth day for the duration of the entire year, it’s huge.”

That workload could shrink even further, according to Sizemore. Perhaps those four-inning outings become three-inning ones, or something along those lines.

But as the storyline has centered on how Crochet has handled the ever-increasing workload management, it’s easy to forget how big a success story this has been, even with the White Sox in the middle of one of the worst seasons in the history of the sport.

“I don’t think there’s any other way to look at it,” Crochet said. “I remember in spring, telling (White Sox trainer James Kruk), I would always joke with him about what I thought that I was capable of. And I was always telling him, ‘120 is my floor, but I think I can throw up to 150 innings.’ It’s kind of what I’m on pace for right now. As soon as I passed 120, I didn’t say anything to him, but I was kind of like, ‘Ha ha, suck it, James.’

“Rightfully so, everyone was kind of doubtful I would even make it this far. So it feels really good and very rewarding for all the work that I put in with this staff and all the work I put in with the staff I worked with in the offseason for it to have gotten to this point and (with me) still feeling strong.

“This would be my second full season ever and my first full healthy season ever. So it would be really, really special (to make it all the way to the end).”

Of course, it will be hard to keep the focus there as the regular season turns to the offseason, because it seems Crochet could be wearing a different uniform come Opening Day next season.

National reports have indicated the White Sox will look to trade Crochet this offseason, though at least part of the conversation that surrounded him leading up to the trade deadline will remain: Will Getz find a team willing to pay what’s assumed to be a steep asking price?

Plenty will change in regard to those talks by then, as there will be no insistence on a contract extension, and Crochet will have answered the questions about whether he’s capable of completing an entire season, even if the White Sox have restricted his innings in the second half.

What will again be the case, though, is that for the second offseason in a row, Getz will be able to offer up a top-of-the-rotation arm in a trade. After shipping Dylan Cease to the Padres in March, will it be back-to-back offseasons in which Getz deals an ace?

Plenty of fans would surely like to know why the White Sox don’t just keep Crochet on the South Side and build around him as the anchor of their starting staff. It’s a reasonable question, considering the long-term plan is to develop the likes of Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith into Crochet-style starters.

Why not make it three of a kind?

Well, the White Sox’ rebuilding project is short on timelines, and it’s a mystery when this team will be ready to contend. It could very well be beyond the end of Crochet’s current club control, which runs two more seasons after this one. Additionally, the team has a history of staying away from the kinds of contracts that top-of-the-market starting pitchers command, and it figures that Crochet would be looking for the kind of deal the White Sox have, at least in the past, been unwilling to hand out.

Things could change on that front, though perhaps not in time to keep Crochet in a White Sox uniform.

But whether or not there’s a desire to pay Crochet, rather than cash him in for prospects this winter, there’s at least a belief in the player and the recognition that he’s something special.

“He’s bona fide one of the best starters in the league at this point,” White Sox pitching czar Brian Bannister said Tuesday. “Between his raw fastball velo, his extension, the power cutter, the ability to show a changeup or sweeper, I believe he’s a No. 1 starter.

“I think he’s going to go out there and continue to pitch even though it’s in an abbreviated sense right now. He’s still dominant. I’m really looking forward to what he can do in the future with a full season under his belt.”

And that’s where this seems to be going for Crochet: a full season.

It might not be anything more than glorified opening assignments in September. But it will be a full season, nonetheless.

At least it will be more than four pitches.