Here's why Crochet was right choice for Opening Day

This story was excerpted from Scott Merkin’s White Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- I was standing in the spacious visitors' manager’s office at Hohokam Stadium on Sunday, along with LaMond Pope and Daryl Van Schouwen, my esteemed colleagues on the White Sox beat, when manager Pedro Grifol asked who we would pick to be his team’s Opening Day starter.

Each of us came up with a different answer. I chose Garrett Crochet, who was confirmed Monday by Grifol as the team’s eighth Day 1 choice on the mound since 2015. Some people seemed surprised by the selection of Crochet, who -- at 24 years old -- becomes the youngest White Sox Opening Day starter since Chris Sale took the ball in 2013, also at 24.

It's almost as if Grifol and pitching coach Ethan Katz threw the fans a 99 mph fastball on the inner half in keeping with Crochet’s repertoire. I was not surprised.

Going by sheer Spring Training results, Crochet was the right choice. Some scouts have mentioned the southpaw as the most dominant White Sox starter in the last five weeks -- but also one of the most dominant starters working in Arizona overall. His 12 strikeouts and zero walks over nine scoreless innings are highly impressive, but Crochet looks and feels the part.

He has a steely focus and determination to prove himself in this move from the bullpen to the starting rotation, lining him up to be the ninth pitcher in the past 110 years to make his first career start on Opening Day. Hat tip, as always, to Sarah Langs for these facts.

This Crochet talk certainly isn’t intended to overlook Erick Fedde or Michael Soroka, each of whom had also been in the Opening Day picture. Fedde reinvented himself and reclaimed his confidence during a great 2023 season in the Korea Baseball Organization, while a healthy Soroka has also pitched well at the outset of his White Sox stint.

There are clear watch points about innings and pitch count totals from start to start and over the course of this season for Crochet. He’s logged 73 career innings over three years as a reliever, he has not held a starting role since making 13 starts from 2018-20 at the University of Tennessee and he missed the entire ’22 campaign as he recovered from Tommy John surgery. Those concerns will be there whether he pitches Game 1 or Game 5, though Crochet feels he’ll respond well to the five-day starter’s setup.

“Kind of the story of my spring is: Be where my feet are,” Crochet said Monday when asked to predict how many innings he’ll pitch on Opening Day. “We’ll see when that day comes. If I’m efficient, who knows? All I can hope to do is give my team a strong outing and put us in a good chance to win the ballgame.

“For me, it’s just attack each batter like it’s the last batter I’m going to face. When I started in the past, that was the story for me: One batter at a time and don’t look too far ahead in the game. If you are trying to save pitches, that’s when you are going to get beat.”

When Crochet was apprised by a White Sox media relations member of my accurate Opening Day starter calculation prior to his Monday media session, he smiled and put forth a forceful three-word response I might eventually put on T-shirts or turn into the title of my podcast or autobiography. He is fired up and he has the blood flowing for Opening Day, not to mention he features the greatest White Sox cachet for that Game 1 honor as the team’s top pick in the 2020 Draft.

He’ll hit 100 mph with a fastball somewhere around 3:15 p.m. CT on March 28 against the Tigers, and the crowd will forget about the 40-degree temperature and the rain or snow, and they’ll be ready for baseball. It’s a good way, it’s the right way, for the new-attitude White Sox to begin.