Why wasn't Garrett Crochet moved at the trade deadline?

A couple of hours before the trade deadline Tuesday, Garrett Crochet was sitting at his locker alongside Jonathan Cannon and Drew Thorpe. At the same time, Paul DeJong had just finished cleaning out his locker and newcomer Miguel Vargas was getting acclimated. It felt like Crochet might get word to start packing any minute; he has built an impressive resume this season, and starting pitchers are always in high demand at the mid-season deadline.

But sometimes the biggest move of a trade deadline is the deal that doesn’t happen. The 5:00 CT hour came and went, and Crochet remained in the White Sox clubhouse. The Sox could have fetched a healthy return for him, but he wasn’t moved. White Sox general manager Chris Getz said there was a lot of interest in Crochet, but nothing that they liked ever lined up.

“We were having discussions with clubs up until the last hour,” he said. “Obviously nothing came together. We didn’t feel like it was the right move to move Garrett although there was that strong interest.”

Why no trade then? Suitors for Crochet’s services had to put together an offer that could match with the fact that Crochet is 25, under team control for two more years, and has developed into a frontline starter. He has the highest strikeouts-per-nine-innings rate in baseball and has managed to get six wins for a team with just 27 to this point in the season.

Further complicating the matter was his innings limit. In his last start before the All Star break, Crochet was held to two innings, and the plan laid out for him at that time was that he would stay on the normal five-day starter’s schedule while reducing the number of innings thrown per start. Any team vying for Crochet would have to weigh his future potential against the limits on helping win in 2024.

And then when Crochet’s camp went public about his desire for a contract extension either from the Sox or from a team that traded for him, as well as his desire to remain a starter and not pitch out of the bullpen down the stretch, that may have gummed the works on trade talks.

“There were clearly a lot of questions about the message that was put out there, how it truly affected his trade market, it’s really tough to measure,” Getz said. “The conversations that I had about Garrett prior in the last couple of weeks or perhaps even earlier was about how we planned on navigating the remainder of the season, and the communications that we had with Garrett and his agent in mapping it out so everyone felt comfortable and still allowed him to go out there and do what he likes to do, and that’s compete and take the ball.

“It’s tough to really get a clear answer on how things were affected.”

In short, Crochet wasn’t traded because he would cost a lot and his situation is complicated by a multitude of factors, so Getz wasn’t getting offers that he deemed worth parting with his starter.

Getz himself was open about the messages coming from Crochet’s camp, calling them “hurtful” on Monday, but he stressed that he considers Crochet a “high character individual” and that the two of them will have plenty of opportunities in the next few weeks to settled any differences that may have arisen between them over this.

Along with smoothing things over, Getz said they would also revisit the plan for Crochet’s workload in August and September. Sox manager Pedro Grifol said they would stick to starting Crochet every fifth day and gradually cut down the number of innings he’s throwing. Grifol plans to hold Crochet to around 75 pitches for at least one more start, “and then start dwindling this thing down a little bit.”

“It’s definitely a hot topic within our organization, and within that clubhouse and my office as well,” Grifol said. “It’s really really important, because if he’s here he’s a huge piece to this thing moving forward. You’re talking about a guy that pitched opening day this year and will probably pitch opening day next year. And it’s important for us to put him in a position to take that ball without restrictions and try to move this thing in the right direction.”

Grifol shooed away any possibility of shutting Crochet down altogether, saying that even shortened starts will be good for him in the long term. Scaling down more than they already are or truncating Crochet’s season could create room for injury, Grifol believes. Given Crochet’s past injury history, that’s a fair concern.

“We’ll do this thing right,” Grifol said. “It all starts and ends with him, and it’s important for guys like him to be part of the program, and it’s important for guys like him to have conviction in the program.”

For the rest of this season then, Crochet will keep donning a White Sox uniform. But that doesn’t mean that the trade question won’t get revisited in the winter. Getz said there would be conversations about Crochet’s desired contract extension – he’s making $800,000 this year and has two more years of arbitration left – but the picture isn’t clear yet whether Getz will put Crochet back on the trading block during the offseason.

“It’s tough to say,” Getz said. “We obviously just closed the door on this trade deadline. We feel very good about the moves we have made and we’ve got a sizeable chunk of the season here to get to the finish line. And we are going to figure out what’s best for the White Sox once the season is over.”

Getz’s other moves, working a three-team deal that shipped out Erick Fedde, Tommy Pham, and Michael Kopech on Monday and then sending Paul DeJong, Eloy Jimenez, and Tanner Banks to the Royals, Orioles, and Phillies respectively, added offensive depth to the minor league system. The primary goal of this trade deadline, according to Getz, was injecting bats into the farm system, regardless of age or level. Getz got a crop of 19-year-old bats along with major leaguer Miguel Vargas, all the kinds of players the team was targeting.

There could be more of that on the way this winter if Getz does reopen Crochet talks. And whether or not how this trade deadline unfolded and the limits on Crochet for the next two months have impacted the value of return the White Sox could get for him, Getz is not concerned.

“What Garrett has done, it’s a bold statement,” Getz said. “What he’s become this year, and arms like that just don’t come around. The interest perhaps could be even stronger being that it’s the offseason and the urgency can change for a handful of clubs. I anticipate the attention on Garrett and the interest in acquiring him is only going to go up.”

Like he did over the past few weeks, Getz will have to consider a few months from now whether he thinks Crochet should be a centerpiece of the team’s long term future or if the offers he will get are enough to give away the 25-year-old budding star. But for a while at least, Crochet will stick around at his locker in the Sox clubhouse.

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