Pregame Notes: Garrett Crochet ventures into uncharted territory

In a mix of starting and relieving, Garrett Crochet threw 65 innings for the Tennessee Volunteers in 2019.

And until he completed six innings on Saturday in Milwaukee to push him to 69 ⅔ on the year, that was still the largest workload Crochet had thrown in a single season.

“We’re at a point now where he’s reaching numbers that really nobody knows,” Pedro Grifol said. “The only thing we can go on is our communication with him, our sports performance people, the way his body is reacting, the testing that he’s doing in the weight room. The testing that he’s doing with his shoulder manuals and everything that’s going on. There’s no decrease in strength anywhere, there’s no decrease in velocity, there’s no warning signs. Right now, we’re OK. There’s going to be a time where we’re going to probably have to slow it down a little bit. That time is not right now.”

Crochet could simply be traded at midseason, and monitoring his innings becomes someone else’s problem; likely forever given the organization’s history of indifference toward the top of the market for starting pitching. But the methods the White Sox are considering for controlling his workload without shutting him down – skipped starts, extra days of rest, shortened outings – will come even if his strength tests remain immaculate.

“It will all be precautionary,” Grifol said. “Because he might not wane at all. This guy’s 6-6, 200-whatever pounds. He might be able to go 185 innings this year. Who’s to say he can’t? It would have to be just precautionary, unless something pops up all of a sudden where we feel we have to slow it down. But he could stay strong all year. I don’t think there’s a blueprint for this.”

As for now, all Crochet is tasked with is single-handedly stopping a franchise-record losing streak.

Jonathan Cannon is back in Chicago, having taken the roster spot of Jake Woodford, who was designated for assignment after his role in Thursday night’s 14-2 debacle. Cannon said he was informed he was returning to Chicago on Wednesday, which is before Woodford’s unsuccessful start and related team-wide failure.

But Cannon is not immediately being inserted into the rotation, with Grifol stating that he will be available to provide multiple innings out of the bullpen for at least the next two nights. He could shift to the rotation after that, since Mike Clevinger is not imminently returning from the injured list and Woodford is currently busy going through the waiver wire.

Cannon held right-handed hitters to a .452 OPS in his first major league stint, whereas lefties somehow hit .517/.548/.897 against him. So yeah, that was sort of the focus upon the young sinkerballer’s return to Charlotte. He ran up a 6.43 ERA in Charlotte after being sent down at the start of May, completing six innings once, but it sounds like there was a decent amount of knob-fiddling going on at Triple-A

“The biggest thing for me working on was really attacking lefties,” Cannon said. “Coming up with a better gameplan and executing that gameplan. That was sort of my biggest struggle up here was getting those lefties out. I was able to work on some pitch design stuff, iron some things out. I feel good where I’m at right now.”

Tommy Pham (ankle sprain) and Andrew Benintendi (Achilles tendinitis) were both full participants in pregame batting practice.

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