Here’s how White Sox are managing Garrett Crochet’s workload in first season as big league starter

Garrett Crochet really didn’t want to come out of Monday’s start against the Twins.

He’d chucked 77 pitches in five innings, and he’d retired 11 straight opposing hitters. Outside of a two-run homer he allowed in the second inning, he was nearly perfect, a heck of a bounce back from a shaky outing his previous time out against the same Twins team.

But Pedro Grifol and Ethan Katz had made up their minds.

The difference in opinion was caught on camera, the broadcast showing Katz talking to a visibly bummed Crochet, the pitching coach putting his hands on the big lefty’s shoulders.

Of course, Crochet wasn’t able to do much more than lodge an unsuccessful appeal. He was done after five innings.

In the heat of the moment, his reaction makes plenty of sense. After the game, Crochet acknowledged that he understood what his manager and pitching coach were doing: executing the organization’s plan to preserve the health of a talented pitcher who logged a grand total of 73 major league innings, all of them in relief, prior to this season.

“He’s a competitor,” Katz told CHGO on Tuesday. “For him, he was pitching really well at that point. There were no signs of him really getting tired. But it’s also a long-term play. You want to see him keep pushing throughout the year and be mindful of all the stuff he’s done.

“It’s tough, but it’s also that you’ve got to be smart with everything you do because of the workload in the past.”

Understandably, it’s a little difficult for a player to think of the big picture when he’s focusing on getting the next batter out and he feels like he can.

“I was frustrated,” Crochet said after the game, “just because of the road trip we just went on. I took part in wearing out the bullpen a good bit. I felt like was a good chance for me to save them. That was kind of going on in my mind: ‘It’s time I do my part and get through six.’ I just really wanted to.

“I feel like they are looking out for my best interest. That was kind of Ethan and Pedro’s side: ‘It’s a long season, so let’s make sure we make every start we can.’

“I understand they are protecting my best interest, so I’ve just got to have faith in them in that regard. I’m just going to keep pitching until the ball is taken out of my hand.”

Crochet has gone from a seeming longshot to make the Opening Day roster to the White Sox’ surprise Opening Day starter to a serious piece of the long-term puzzle on the South Side.

How that puzzle ends up being put together by Chris Getz and his front office remains a mystery, as this seems to be just the outset of another long-term rebuild for the organization. It’s been a relative mystery, too, how the White Sox planned to limit Crochet this season as he makes the leap from reliever to starter.

But we’re starting to get a better idea of what the plan is, and Monday night was a perfect example of how the team will try to keep Crochet making starts through the end of the season.

Grifol explained that the White Sox saw an opportunity to cut Crochet’s outing short, not just because that was the move that was beneficial to the pitcher but because they had Brad Keller at their disposal, the veteran pitcher recently called up to aid a taxed bullpen while he waits for his first turn in the starting rotation. Keller was able to throw multiple innings, and he ended up pitching the sixth and getting the first two outs of the seventh.

“We were set up in a way we could do that,” Grifol said after Monday’s game. “We had some length with Keller, and that pocket (of hitters in the Twins’ lineup) was really good for him. It worked out perfectly. There’s going to be times where we might not have that opportunity. If Keller wouldn’t have been here today, we might not have had that opportunity.

“You’ve got to take advantage of those situations when they pop up like this.”

Crochet’s unique path to this point has prevented him from racking up a ton of innings. His final season at the University of Tennessee was cut short by the pandemic, which also wiped out the minor league season in 2020, when he was drafted. He made a near-immediate leap to the big leagues, pitching in the closing days of that COVID-shortened season, before pitching as a reliever in 2021. He missed the entirety of 2022 while recovering from Tommy John, and that recovery, plus a shoulder setback, kept him to minimal work last year, too.

Fans might think back to the years-ago treatment of the now-retired Stephen Strasburg, the big-time pitcher who came off an injury and was held to a strict innings limit, with the Nationals shutting him down after he hit that number.

The White Sox don’t really want to do that with Crochet. They’re employing a different strategy, one where they’ll bring abrupt endings to certain outings, like Monday’s, buying him an inning here and an inning there so they can stave off a situation where they’d have to shut him down.

“It’s just kind of just reading what we’re seeing. There’s not like a set thing where we’re saying, ‘Once he gets to this point, he’s done.’ We’re trying to get to the point where we can have him keep going and we’re not trying to shut him down,” Katz said. “Obviously, the more starts he can take, the more times he can get on the field, the more experience he gets, the better it is for us in the long run.

”We’re trying to avoid getting to that point (where we’d have to shut him down) and really kind of using all the information we’re getting to put together the best plan for him.”

Crochet, the competitor, might not love that plan in the moment. Starting pitchers always want to go seven innings or more every time they step on the mound. Of course, he’ll probably be thankful if it means he gets to pitch in September versus hitting an innings limit in July and stopping for the year.

That could mean shortened outings like Monday. It could involve the White Sox using the schedule to their benefit, as they’ll do this week, utilizing Thursday’s off day to get Crochet a fifth day of rest before his next start Sunday in St. Louis.

Of course, while keeping Crochet healthy is perhaps the most important aspect of this experiment, there’s also the somewhat notable part of it that has to do with how he’s pitching. Crochet had White Sox fans going nuts after back-to-back beauties to start his season, including an awesome effort on Opening Day. Those games had people thinking this could be the birth of a new ace on the South Side.

The small-sample gods struck back, and Crochet failed to complete five innings in three straight starts, roughed up to the point his ERA blew up from 2.00 after his third start to 6.37 after his sixth. It’s down again after his excellent five innings Monday.

The voyage of navigating Crochet’s workload will also, you’d imagine, help the White Sox learn whether they have someone to build a rotation of the future around.

But Crochet can’t get to the future without staying healthy, and the White Sox are going to pull out all the stops to get him there, whether the lefty likes it or not.

“The workload is a real thing. We can’t hide from that,” Grifol said Tuesday. “The innings were really low last year. The pitches thrown were really low. Every time he steps on the mound is uncharted waters. We have to really monitor that and we have to communicate with him and we’ve got to be smart.

“He’s a competitor. He didn’t want to come out of that game. At the end of the day, he knows that’s the right thing for him, because the idea here is to not only help us win baseball games but to keep him healthy and make sure he’s part of the future here for years to come.”