All-Star pitcher Garrett Crochet remains a hot target as Major League Baseball's trade deadline approaches, but it sounds like his current team is tiring of dealing with his situation.
Last week, Crochet's demands for his usage for the rest of the season went public, and it has thrown his trade market into disarray. Jon Heyman reports the 25-year-old Chicago White Sox ace wants to remain a starter for the rest of the season but will refuse to pitch in the postseason unless he has a contract extension in hand.
It's clear White Sox general manager Chris Getz wasn't a fan of that going public.
"The communication had been very strong between Garrett and I and his agency," Getz said (via ESPN). "I was a little surprised and taken aback by how they went about it, considering I had a conversation with his agent the night before. That’s not exactly the tactic I would have taken, being a former player."
Getz further claimed he and Crochet are fine but added, "We understand why a stance would be taken like that. How you go about expressing that, was a bit hurtful, quite honestly, considering we could have handled it a little bit differently and still accomplish what everyone wanted to accomplish."
Any team acquiring Crochet would want him for the postseason, but would also have few reasons to sign him to an extension. He's under team control through 2026 and carries a high risk of injury. Crochet has been injured on and off since his freshman year of college and underwent Tommy John surgery in the spring of 2022. Before 2024, the most innings he'd every thrown in a season was 65 as a sophomore in college at Tennessee.
Crochet is a high-end talent having a brilliant season. He's currently 6–8 with a 3.23 ERA, a 1.01 WHIP, and is second in baseball with 160 strikeouts against 26 walks in 114 1/3 innings. He leads all MLB pitchers in fWAR (4.1) and is second in FIP (2.41). But every inning he throws the rest of the season increases his chances of injury, given that he only threw 12 2/3 innings during the 2023 campaign as he recovered from elbow surgery.
Trading for Crochet was already a big risk, but now with his contract and usage demands, it just became a whole lot riskier. No one understands that more than Getz, who seems exhausted by the situation.
We'll see if anyone is willing to risk it and go all-in on Crochet.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as White Sox GM Sounds Fed Up With Garrett Crochet Situation.
