With apologies to Stephen Stills, it appears the White Sox are more likely to love the one they’re with than be with the one they love. That’s the way the Garrett Crochet situation looks as the hot stove starts percolating.
There’s no reason the White Sox can’t commit to the 25-year-old. He’s coming off a breakout season in which he made a stunningly successful move from the bullpen to the rotation and has two years of team control remaining.
But it’s never been Jerry Reinsdorf’s way to trust starting pitchers, so it’s highly unlikely they will seek to stretch that control to five-plus years, giving them time to dig out of their historically deep hole. Instead Crochet is being marketed as this winter’s most appealing trade piece, with the goal to add multiple prospects who can develop into core players.
Chris Getz, who is in his second year as Reinsdorf’s top baseball man, has been busy accumulating arms to use in a young rotation. He even passed on hitting prospects Jac Caglianone, JJ Wetherholt and Christian Moore to select Arkansas left-hander Hagen Smith with the fifth pick in this year’s draft.
It appears his strategy with Crochet is to get a return of impactful position players capable of helping the South Siders contend again in 2027 and beyond. Think of it as the exact opposite of what A.J. Preller did when he was shopping the final year of Juan Soto control last winter.
It probably seems to be a reach to compare Crochet with Soto. But while Crochet only jumped onto his spot on a pedestal in 2024, he is possibly more widely coveted than Soto was for two reasons: everyone can afford him and all 30 teams need pitching.
So let’s look at the Soto deal.
Talks between Preller and interested teams dominated news at the general managers meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz., and remained the subject of rumors at the start of the winter meetings in Nashville, Tenn. The deal between the Padres and Yankees was reached late in the meetings and was announced on Dec. 7, as teams were starting to head home.
The Padres were asking for pitching, and they got a lot of pitching in the deal. They included outfielder Trent Grisham alongside Soto and received pitchers Michael King, Randy Vasquez, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito and catcher Kyle Higashioka. Preller later traded Thorpe and three other prospects to the White Sox for Dylan Cease.
Between them, Cease, King and Vasquez combined to make 83 starts in which they compiled a 3.54 ERA over 457 2/3 innings. They were worth a combined 8.9 WAR on a 93-69 team that was stopped only by the Dodgers.
King, Thorpe, Vasquez and Brito (4.12 ERA in 26 games as a multi-inning reliever) had a combined 20 years of control between them when San Diego got them from the Yankees. That’s the likely blueprint for what the deal Getz would like to make for Crochet at the December meetings in Dallas, if not before then.
The teams that seem most likely to pay a high price for Crochet aren’t the ones who had success in the most recent postseason, with one exception. The Mets seemly highly motivated after they lost to the Dodgers in the NLCS. Put them on the short list with the upwardly mobile Orioles, Red Sox, Diamondbacks and Cubs.
All those teams have a volume of young hitters to fill out a Soto-sized deal. In addition to prospects ranked in MLB.com’s top 50 — the Red Sox currently have three in the top 10 — think of packages that also include young big leaguers like Baltimore’s Heston Kjerstad and Jackson Holliday, and Arizona’s Jake McCarthy, Blaze Alexander and Alek Thomas.
Crochet was actively shopped without being traded at the mid-season deadline, with his limited workload and desire for a contract extension creating hurdles to a deal. The situation is much less complicated this time around. The White Sox don’t have to trade their ace but it sure looks like they will.
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