Garrett Crochet's first MLB start went as well as anybody could've possibly imagined.
The White Sox offense? I think everybody could picture an Opening Day shutout pretty easily.
Crochet threw six innings of one-run ball, which was enough to get tagged for the loss, but also enough to give this grand experiment some immediate merit.
Crochet struck out eight while scattering five singles, and he didn't walk or plunk a soul (Michael Kopech did both in his one inning of work). He only made one mistake, and unfortunately it ended up saddling him with a loss.
He started the third inning by misplacing an 0-2 fastball middle-middle to Javier Báez, and Báez took advantage of the reprieve with a single. Báez then stole second when a high fastball popped out of Martín Maldonado's mitt, then advanced the other 180 feet on a groundout and an Andy Ibáñez sacrifice fly for the game's only run.
Crochet absorbed the lesson and carried on with the rest of his day. The Statcast page only shows 11 whiffs, but the eye test showed what you wanted to see -- a fastball-slider combination dynamic enough to make the cutter and changeup something to sprinkle in for fun. He threw 61 of 87 pitches for strikes, and the Báez single was the only time a leadoff hitter reached, which simplified things immensely.
Unfortunately, Skubal and three Detroit relievers had an even simpler task at hand. They scattered just three hits, and while Riley Greene flagged down a couple of well-struck line drives to left field, they otherwise went quietly. Tigers pitchers struck out 11 White Sox without a walk, and retired the last 17 batters faced after Eloy Jiménez's one-out single in the fourth.
As economical as Skubal was -- he needed just 83 pitches over six innings -- Shelby Miller, Andrew Chafin and Jason Foley wasted even less time. They used just 30 pitches over the final three innings, and 23 were strikes.
For those following the theory that Chris Getz built a team that'll get the season over with as quickly as possible, the time of game was 2 hours and 3 minutes.
Bullet points:
*Jason Benetti was shown on the video board, and he received a standing ovation.
*Andrew Vaughn was rung up on a pitch timer violation, failing to establish himself in the batter's box by the eight-second mark after fouling a pitch off the knob of his bat to fall behind 0-2.
*The announced attendance was 33,420, which is short of a sellout.
*A simulation of an all-Chris Getz offense against Tarik Skubal on Out of the Park Baseball 25 had the White Sox winning 8-3.
