Crochet's role for White Sox goes beyond the mound

BOSTON -- At 32-111, the White Sox are well aware of where they stand. They know there’s no stretch run or postseason hope, and that they’re nine losses away from tying the 1962 Mets for the most defeats in a single season in the Modern Era (since 1900).

But there are still three weeks of baseball left to play. So what are the White Sox hoping to achieve by the end of the 2024 regular season?

"We want to be fighting every day and improving every day,” interim manager Grady Sizemore said Saturday afternoon before the second of three games at Fenway Park. "I think there's always something that we can work on, whether it's baserunning, offense, defense or something individual. And I think there's positives and negatives in every game. I think it's trying to clean up the negatives, build up the positives, try to get to that point where we're building momentum into the offseason, and hopefully that leads to wins too.”

Saturday’s 7-5 loss to the Red Sox served as a microcosm of both the positives and negatives. The White Sox got out to an early lead in the first inning with the first of two homers on the night, but the top of the frame gave way to an uncharacteristic bottom half of the inning from Garrett Crochet.

After giving up four runs over two innings, the All-Star left-hander's second-half ERA ballooned to 7.09, compared to the 3.02 first-half mark that put him in a number of Trade Deadline talks.

Pitching with a two-run lead courtesy of Andrew Vaughn’s 17th homer, Crochet began his outing by giving up five hits, including a two-run homer to Tyler O’Neill and an RBI double to Connor Wong, both on middle-inside cutters.

"I can't even really call it poor execution, there really wasn't much,” Crochet said. “Didn't command the fastball of the glove side. Everything was kind of just mid-thigh, and it was kind of a situation where I felt like, in hindsight, guys were just turning and burning. And I kind of kept attempting to go back in there, something I've been burned by before this year and wish I would have learned by now, but that's just kind of how it went down.”

By the time the All-Star break came around, Crochet had already set a new season high in innings. Entering the second half with 107 1/3 frames under his belt, Crochet had nearly doubled his previous high of 65, which came in 2019 as a sophomore at Tennessee. Prior to this year, he had 73 innings total over three seasons in Chicago’s bullpen.

Now nine starts into the second half, Crochet has become accustomed to the innings limit that was imposed on the left-hander following the break. The plan is for Crochet to go out every fifth day and throw four innings or 60-65 pitches. The preparation doesn’t change knowing that there’s a hook coming earlier than a normal start, but the weight of a long inning early on sits a bit heavier.

"It's tough,” Crochet said. “Had a long first inning and knowing that I don't have much more to go, tried to be a little bit more efficient in the second one. The tough part isn't the preparation. It's just putting the bullpen in a tough spot, putting the team in a tough spot overall. Whereas if it were any other given start, it's like, ‘Maybe now I can go out there and put up some more zeros and help keep us in the fight so we don't have to pivot so early.'"

Aside from his encouraging first-half numbers, Crochet’s leadership has also served as a positive takeaway for the White Sox this season. Sizemore credited Crochet, along with Vaughn, Andrew Benintendi and Gavin Sheets as guys who have helped keep up morale and hold their teammates accountable through a grueling season.

"He's done a great job with just staying composed, not getting frustrated, knowing all those things,” Sizemore said. “He's still competing, still throwing good games for us. It’s just every now and then, a team’s gonna have a good night and they're gonna have good swings, and that's just what happened tonight.”