Pregame notes: Garrett Crochet might have already thrown his longest start of 2024

Garrett Crochet was unleashed for seven innings and 102 pitches on June 13, and it doesn't sound likely he'll reach those heights again in 2024. At least, not for the White Sox.

"We’re going to start dwindling his workload down a little bit, and we’ll manage that correctly," said Pedro Grifol. "He’s slowly detraining through the course of the year so he can finish the season. We’re not going to detrain him and build him back to the capacity where he was at the start of the season. This is going downhill now. We have to really monitor his workload."

Crochet is at 94 1/3 innings pitched for the season, which is both a career-high and more than three times as many innings as he threw across the majors and minors this year. While he has shown and reported no issues, the White Sox are not going to wait for symptoms to begin throttling his workload. With the season reaching it's halfway point Tuesday night, Crochet likely has a strong case to be the White Sox All-Star representative, but the club is not risking the physical fallout that might come with a full-season starter workload.

However, Grifol made it clear they're not looking to shut Crochet down at any point, but taper his usage down as the season winds to a close

"We have a plan in place, we have a blueprint in place,” Grifol said. "I’m not going to post that plan for everybody to see it, because there’s nothing black and white in this game, everything’s always gray and you can always make adjustments to everything."

Of course, Chris Getz has tried to market Crochet's usage to potential trade partners as more open-ended than simply available as an occasional bullpen arm.

"Any team in baseball would want Garrett Crochet on their club," Getz said last month. "How they would use him, would be up to them."

We certainly know that Crochet would be down for carrying a heavier load if asked.

-- Jonathan Cannon naturally considered tipping as a possible culprit for his blowup outing Sunday in Detroit, where the Tigers chased him after one inning with eight runs (five earned) charged to him. But he says his review of the outing didn't turn up a smoking gun.

"That was my first thought to look at it, but I didn't see anything that stood out to me," Cannon said. "They made sure that everything is cleaned up in the delivery and stuff. Just re-evalauted the attack plan, make a couple of little adjustments before this weekend."

After issuing two walks in his previous 18 2/3 innings, Cannon primarily notes that the Tigers came out super-aggressive rather than allowing him to get ahead, and that combined with shaky command. But he doesn't want to panic and lose confidence in the attack plan that fueled three great outings, in light of one stinker.

On Tuesday, it did not seem like he was panicking.

"Unfortunately, if you play this game long enough, you have those kind of days and I was joking, I think that might be the shortest start of my entire life," Cannon said. "Credit to them, they had a good plan going in and now it's time for me to make a little adjustment."

-- Andrew Benintendi said last week that his sore Achilles will be an issue for him to manage for the rest of the season, and that looks like it's going to be the issue that knocks him off true everyday player status for 2024.

Grifol said left-handed opposing starters will provide matchup opportunities to rest Benintendi (likely for Corey Julks), and also added that his activity level in left field will also be a barometer for determining if he needs a day off.

-- Shohei Ohtani has a .167/.348/.333 career line against Chris Flexen. Ohtani's one homer against the right-hander was in 2021, and watching the video and its sub-100 mph exit velocity, it was sort of a cheapie. Flexen has walked Ohtani five times in 23 plate appearances, so the primary thing to say about his approach against the two-time MVP is that it isn't driven by hubris.

-- There is some rain in the forecast, but the tarp is not on the field, nor at the ready at publish time.

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