CHICAGO — The Chicago White Sox have a plan for Garrett Crochet to help the left-hander with his workload for the rest of the season.
Crochet was removed after he retired the first two batters in the sixth inning of Monday’s 3-0 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers. There was no score when he was replaced.
The 25-year-old Crochet threw 91 pitches, 60 for strikes. He threw 85 pitches in his previous start, when he struck out eight in six innings in a 4-1 loss to Houston.
“We’re going to start dwindling his workload down a little bit, and we’ll manage that correctly,” White Sox manager Pedro Grifol said Tuesday. “But it’s not something we’re going to put out and say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing,’ because nothing in this game is black and white.
“He might have five innings where he goes 12 pitches or less and we might let him go six or seven innings, even when we’re trying to minimize his workload. It all depends on what he does.”
Crochet has been Chicago’s best pitcher this season, but he is already up to 94 1/3 innings — 40 more than his career high from 2021. The 6-foot-6 Crochet, who made his first big league start on opening day, had Tommy John surgery on April 5, 2022.
He leads the American League with 130 strikeouts. He is 5-2 with a 1.53 ERA in his past 11 starts.
“He’s slowly detraining through the course of the year so he can finish the season,” Grifol said. “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.”
The White Sox carried a major league-worst 21-59 record into Tuesday night’s game against the Dodgers. Crochet is among the top available pitchers ahead of the July 30 trade deadline, but concern over his workload presents a unique challenge when it comes to putting together a deal.
When it comes to his pitch count, Crochet said he vouches for himself as much as he can.
“I think that I could throw 130 pitches and be cool,” he said after Monday night’s game. “That’s how I felt like I was tonight. But with where the innings are at, I definitely understand where everybody’s coming from, trying to monitor things.”