In the bad old days of the last White Sox rebuild, a game that simply offered a single performance that was meaningful for the team's long-term goals was a good one.
By that standard, Garrett Crochet justified the price of admission Thursday for a decidedly not capacity Opening Day crowd. For all the preseason fretting about his lack of starting experience, lack of built-up stamina, or lack of a clearly defined third pitch, Crochet looked the part of a frontline starter in 2024. Even just a mild build-up from his last spring outing (80 pitches jumped up to 87 on Thursday) still got him through a smooth six innings of one-run ball, and he was pushing for more by the time his afternoon ended.
"It was nice to just give my team a fighting chance," Crochet said.
For a team that's been trying to sell Crochet as an exciting new leader of a completely remade White Sox rotation, it's as good as anyone could have hoped for. Unfortunately for the Sox, the rest of their first impression was as advertised, where their offense made it a challenge to be competitive even in a game with the slimmest of margins. Tarik Skubal & Co. held White Sox batters to three singles in a quiet and quick 1-0 loss to their division rival Tigers, with old friend Jason Benetti looking on from above.
"Definitely feels like a punch in the gut," said Andrew Vaughn, who had one of two Sox hits that left the infield. "[Crochet] went out there and threw the ball really well, all our pitchers did. They chucked it. They were around the zone, they battled. We just didn't string anything together."
Especially if you're considering his quality of competition, Skubal is a sneaky AL Cy Young candidate. And quality left-handed pitching that both puts the Sox' top of the order at a disadvantage (Andrew Benintendi and Yoán Moncada combined for 0-for-8 with three strikeouts), and neutralizes their best bench bats (Gavin Sheets and Dominic Fletcher sat while lefty Andrew Chafin mowed through the bottom of the order in the eighth) is going to be an issue all year. But Tigers manager A.J. Hinch didn't push Skubal past six innings nor 90 pitches either, and still watched his pitching staff retire the last 17 White Sox hitters of the game in order.
The funky thing about making clean baseball the selling point of the team, is that not scoring any runs puts every moment under a microscope with harsh fluorescent lighting overhead. The margin of victory for the Tigers came when the notoriously chase-happy Javy Báez rifled a single on an 0-2 Crochet heater that drifted into the zone, and stole second on a pitch that popped out of Martín Maldonado's glove. Crochet only allowed productive outs from there on out, but when your own offense fails to even generate a runner in scoring position, that's enough to swing the contest.
"[Báez] took a good jump and I was trying to be a little too fast than what I needed to be," Maldonado said. "I didn’t catch it. It was a little bit higher than what I was expecting. I think Crochet made really good pitches and you have to give credit to [Andy] Ibañez for I think fighting some tough pitches to get the ball in the air [for the sacrifice fly]. Other than that, that’s a game that could have gone either way."
Maldonado's missed catch wasn't anything a fan base that watched Yasmani Grandal and A.J. Pierzynski hasn't seen before, and shouldn't be a game-altering moment in most circumstances. Vaughn was punched out in the seventh for a pitch clock violation when reliever Shelby Miller wasn't even on the mound yet; a situation even home plate umpire Brian O'Nora admitted to Pedro Grifol that he hates dinging batters for. But such is the nature of playing without a margin for error that these gaffes -- if they even fully merit such a label -- loom large, especially on a day where there were no White Sox at-bats with runners in scoring position to scrutinize.
The White Sox strive to out-execute the competition in 2024. Since they largely did so on the pitching side and created the low-scoring, closely played ballgame they have to play this year, it makes for an ominous opening to be shut out and beaten by a Tigers club that does not offer an imposing offensive attack of their own.
"We’re going to catch the baseball and we’re going to pitch it," Grifol said. "We’ve just got to find ways to claw out some runs and win these types of ballgames. These are the games you’ve got to win, you’ve got to find a way to win it if you want to be really good. And we’ll get there."
Skubal is very good and is going to have more afternoons this season where hard contact eludes his opposition. But a walk-free nine innings where the White Sox offense was dispatched in 113 pitches and chased out of the zone north of a 40 percent clip in front of over 33,000 fans, was not the tone of a new plate approach they were hoping to set.
Opening Day tone can also obviously be meaningless. Matt Davidson spearheading a six-homer barrage on opening day six years ago did not portend a juggernaut 2018 White Sox offense, and at least one mention of the fact that no one has ever gone 162-0 was overheard in the postgame home clubhouse.
But the White Sox are striving to re-build trust step-by-step, game-by-game, and the first step suggested that we would be wise to tune in for the Crochet starts, and track the small victories.
