PHOENIX — Garrett Crochet is aiming for a growth mindset these days. After 56 2/3 innings out of the bullpen last year (playoffs included) in his first full professional season, he’s easing into an extended relief role, hoping an incremental bump in responsibilities will nudge him closer to the starting rotation. But he’s also got enough feel to sense when something is trending wrong and it’s time to cut bait.
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“I’m 22 and had a pretty bad receding hairline,” Crochet said, sporting a smoothly shaved head. “It’s not something that I wanted to grasp, but it’s something that I needed to. So that’s where it brought me.”
So if Crochet is not prone to self-delusion, then that offers a reason to buy into his optimism about the role the White Sox are forecasting for him. He’s aware of the workload, control and pitch mix demands that come with more innings and more responsibility. The question is how much room to operate the 2022 Sox will allot to him, amid the demands to contend for the World Series. The advertising of “this year’s Michael Kopech” could be hard to live up to, since there are no seven-inning doubleheader games he can easily provide three-to-four-inning spot starts for, and because Tony La Russa is loath to have one of his two projected lefties in the bullpen out of commission for days on end.
“It’s a balancing act,” pitching coach Ethan Katz said. “It’s also to see how he recovers, because the way Michael recovers to how Garrett recovers (could be different). If he goes out there and throws three innings, we might be in trouble for three to four days and that could kill the ‘pen.”
But Crochet is expected to work multiple innings more, and build his innings base higher for the potential 120-plus innings any sort of future starter role would demand — which, to be clear, he is hoping will come next season. Just two innings, Crochet asserts, can be a step toward that.
“Going out there for a second inning after you come in the dugout is a totally different mindset,” Crochet said. “That’s very enticing to me, just the opportunity to get more innings and help the team out a little bit more. That’s an opportunity that I’ll never turn down. And something that I definitely look forward to, getting multiple innings out there. I think it will eventually help you transform into that starter role a lot more seamlessly.”
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To make things seamless, Crochet will more than anything have to stay healthy. Measuring his routine against those of other big leaguers last year, and ducking significant injury save for a short bout of back soreness, was a boost of confidence. But the big game-changer he’s citing is having an actual offseason, rather than spending the winter rehabilitating from a flexor strain. Maybe it wasn’t the most normal offseason. But Crochet was one of the few White Sox in camp the morning after the lockout ended, since he spent the offseason training in Arizona at PUSH Performance in Tempe, working alongside Ryan Burr and other major leaguers.
“It’s a different offseason when you get to kind of just have some downtime and then build up without having to think about stuff that you are dealing with,” Katz said. “Liam (Hendriks) was like the captain down here with all the Arizona guys, and he was with him the whole time. So he was in good hands. It’s good for him, because he did get to have a normal offseason. He looked good Friday in his live (batting practice), so he looks great where he’s at. He came in last year throwing a curveball, and right now he’s throwing a slider. And it wasn’t on purpose, it’s just kind of what happened. He threw a really good slider yesterday, and it’s on track, so we’re not working backward from that. We’re trying to move forward.”
Garrett Crochet’s two attempts to finish off Andrew Vaughn with two strikes. pic.twitter.com/ybKIG50Qof
— James Fegan (@JRFegan) March 11, 2022
The sharpness of Crochet’s final slider in that video — showing the movement that Katz covets — might grab your attention first and is still his moneymaker pitch. But Crochet notes the first offering in the video is a changeup, which was following two fastballs for strikes (not on the recording). The changeup missed the plate, but it also faded to the arm side, where it can still play a role setting up other things.
“I went fastball, fastball, changeup, slider, which is where I feel like I’ll just be able to lead myself into at-bats a lot better,” Crochet said. “With the ability to manipulate the changeup, and in pairing that with the slider going opposite directions. I think that putting those two on the same tunnel will be very hard to deal with.”
Crochet’s changeup was lightly regarded coming out of college, with the White Sox being one of the few parties touting its potential before the 2020 draft — knowing the viability of a third pitch would be a huge determinant on whether he could be a starter in the majors. Even now, the changeup was lightly used (eight percent of his pitches in 2021), and firm, since it clocked in around 91 mph in Sunday’s spring game, just 6 mph slower than his average fastball. But Crochet is ready to build a supply where he can simply point to its results.
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“I didn’t throw the changeup as much as I would like to,” Crochet said. “But I didn’t give up a hit on it all year. So I’m very confident bringing that in moving forward.”
Command of three pitches is as significant of a barrier to starting and thriving in extended work as having multiple ways to get hitters out. Crochet’s 11.7 percent walk rate last year, even allowing for two intentional free passes, was representative of struggles in that regard, though it improved in the second half. He spent some time trying to find the right tempo in his distinctive delivery for consistency, but by the end of the season was focused more on mentality.
Even as his fastball velocity settled more into the range of 97 mph, opponents slugged .289 against Crochet as a whole in 2021. Especially in the case of his off-speed offerings, Crochet did not get hit. His in-zone results indicated he just needed to explore a “here it is, hit it” approach to its logical endpoint, and he’s starting to embrace it.
“He lays it all out there,” Aaron Bummer said. “There’s no fear. He just goes out there and puts his best stuff in the middle, in the strike zone and just lets it play. Watching guys, including guys like Lance (Lynn), guys like Liam (Hendriks), the guys that have extreme amounts of sustained success in this league, dominate inside the strike zone.”
Around this time last spring, Crochet was fielding questions about the dissolution of the consistent triple-digit heat that marked his 2020 major league cameo, and lowered the bar for his success to just pounding overwhelming fastballs down the zone. But the past year has established what level of stuff he has to work with, and also that it’s more than enough to succeed with. And to move to the next level of responsibility with the Sox, he’s obsessing over a different set of ones and zeroes.
“I think about it from time to time, but I think that that’s just rat poison,” Crochet said of longing for 100 mph. “Talking with Katz and (Curt) Hasler a couple of days ago, we were just going over my stats from last year, and based on a 1-0 count or a 0-1 count, the results were drastically favored toward the hitter when I started them with a ball. So just challenging the hitter from the first pitch on in the at-bat, that’s going to be my main focus moving forward this spring and going into the season. I think that that’ll make a world of difference.”
(Photo: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)