If confidently carrying Dylan Cease on the roster into late spring training before swinging a trade was a crafty bit of maintaining leverage, the White Sox have upped the ante in showing free agent pitchers they're not over a barrel in their need to add bulk innings from the open market.
We kid because we love, and in naming Garrett Crochet Monday as the Opening Day starter, the White Sox made the most interesting choice they can make for the honor.
Erick Fedde and Michael Soroka have the most substantial track record, but lack the cachet with the fan base or the firm place in the team's long-term future to represent a changing of the guard. Nick Nastrini is pitching worthy of a rotation slot and is someone fans should get to know very soon, but such an honor would mirror the last front office's terminal case of having too much dip on their chip with non-household-name prospects.
Crochet heading up the White Sox rotation manages to straddle the fence in providing someone the fan base has been waiting for years to see the full capabilities of, while also turning over a new leaf. With apologies to Dane Dunning, the White Sox haven't had a first major league start that registered as appointment viewing since ... well, you remember that Dylan Cease guy?
It's also a lot of dip on their chip. Crochet would readily tell you that as much as he's spent the whole offseason training to be a starter, it's his first time back in that routine since essentially his sophomore year of college, and Tommy John surgery rehab and a shoulder strain didn't make 2023 a typical platform year from the bullpen.
"I don't really count that as a factor in my mind," Crochet said earlier this spring about his light workload last year. "When I've started in the past, once you get to the two-up phase, three-ups come a lot easier. It's just getting used to the sitting down, getting back up and throwing. I think it's going to come a little bit more naturally."
The White Sox are prepared to have Crochet be a fully-fledged member of the rotation, but someone they monitor closely; a situation akin to Carlos Rodón serving in the 2021 rotation after managing just 7⅔ innings in the COVID-shortened season before due to TJ rehab and back issues. Rodón hit a fatigue wall in the second half of that year, but still compiled 132⅔ innings while making an All-Star team, whereas Crochet has 73 major league innings in his career at age 24.
Playing 20 pounds leaner, hitting the high-90s regularly, Crochet has had great results this spring, striking out 10 and walking none in 7⅓ scoreless innings. If the White Sox are trying to lean into this new player development concept of rewarding the guys who look the most electric in camp, Crochet has pitched his way into upward mobility
Crochet got up to three innings against the Angels last Thursday, which is a step behind Fedde and Soroka, who have both worked four innings at this point. Primarily, Crochet's fastball has looked dominant, which is both the jewel of his profile and can be a separating weapon at its best, but it can obscure whether his strike-throwing with the three secondaries he's trying to incorporate has progressed to starter-level.
In most normal situations, this is just plain over-aggressive. And that certainly is probably still the safe call for someone with a 12.7 percent walk rate out of the bullpen for his major league career. Bumps in the road are essentially a given, it's just whether the jolts they provide will be manageable enough to serve a developmental purpose.
But with Crochet entering his arbitration years and so much of the White Sox roster built to buy time until more ambitious projects are ready, you can see how this sudden marriage of needing to see what the left-hander is capable of sooner than later and a team with no more compelling path to explore came about, even if you're still reeling from the announcement.
"All I can do is whatever is in my power in my five-day routine and be as open and honest with the training staff as a I can," Crochet said of managing his innings over the year.
Looking back on how Crochet's early development as a starter was put on the backburner in the name of serving a contending bullpen, it's another potential jumping off point for bemoaning the lack of depth that ultimately sullied that whole White Sox project. But having done plenty of that already and trying to derive purpose from this coming season, at least there's something compelling about years of futzing around with Crochet's role finally giving way to trying to find out what he can do.
