CHICAGO (WGN) — If Garrett Crochet circled Sunday on the calendar as his White Sox revenge game, he couldn’t have asked for a better performance in his first start back on the South Side against his former team.
“I’m chasing greatness every time I touch the mound. Everybody is,” Crochet said Friday. “I want to throw a complete game no-hitter and as soon as the first hit’s given up, I’m like ‘F***, alright. Let’s move on.’ But it’s just seeing how many zeroes I can put up every time I go out there.”
Crochet took a no-hitter into the eighth inning at Rate Field Sunday, and the Red Sox won the final match of a three-game set to avoid a sweep. After five straight 1-2-3 innings to start his day, Crochet’s performance was 123 days removed from the day he was traded to Boston.
Game Recap
How the game started in the first inning was a whole lot like how it was in the fourth, the seventh and so on.
Crochet blew four straight fastballs by Miguel Vargas for a game-opening strikeout before Luis Robert Jr. made him use a couple off-speed offerings in at-bat No. 2. The result was still the same though, a swinging strikeout on Crochet’s fastball.
Copy/paste those results with a few grounders and a couple of flyouts sprinkled in between, and you have the collective results of the next 13 South Side batters.
The White Sox didn’t manage their first baserunner until the sixth inning. Brooks Baldwin worked the count to 3-1 and took a fastball just off the inside corner for ball four to lead off the inning. But just like how Crochet began the game, he struck out two straight batters to end the frame and leave Baldwin stranded at first.
Shane Smith started opposite Crochet and threw an inspired effort. Smith tossed six innings of two-run ball and didn’t give up a run until the fifth inning—a two-run, two-out double off the bat of Trevor Story.
“[Smith] attacked guys with the fastball. Thought maybe his changeup wasn’t as good as maybe we’ve seen it before, but he had enough with the fastball and the slider to be really, really effective,” Will Venable said postgame. “He’s just finding different ways to get guys out. Having an understanding of what he has that day and I thought today was a great example of that.”
The wind played a role in Story’s double going from a warning track flyout, to a game-changing double that Baldwin couldn’t quite make the play on in right field.
“I was shaded in a little bit there, trying to cut off a run to the plate on a single,” Baldwin said, recounting the play in the clubhouse after the game. “And as well as that ball was hit, it should probably have gone out without the wind. I tried to find the wall and found it a little late and by the time I found the ball again, I was not in the right place.”
Crochet was pulled with one out in the eight after Chicago broke up his no-hit bid. Chase Meidroth—one of four prospects the White Sox acquired when they dealt Crochet to Boston—singled off a 1-2 cutter up the middle into center field.
“He was aggressive,” Venable said of Meidroth’s eighth-inning single. “He’s a competitor and that’s just the kind of at-bats we’ve seen every time he steps to the place. Great to see.”
Crochet’s final line was 7.1 innings pitched, one hit, one walk, one earned run and 11 strikeouts on 96 pitches, 65 of which were strikes.
The Red Sox pulled Crochet in favor of another Garrett, this one having the last name Whitlock. Chicago seized on the opportunity to cut their 2-0 deficit in half.
Baldwin and catcher Matt Thaiss laced back-to-back singles to score Meidroth, but Josh Palacios struck out and Vargas flew out to straightaway left field to leave runners stranded at second and third.
“Yeah, we are still fighting. It doesn’t matter how many hits we have on the board, how many runs,” Baldwin said. “We are still on the gas pedal from pitch 1 to the end.”
But as has been the case for most of the last two-plus years, luck wasn’t on the White Sox side down the stretch.
Story tacked on to his quality day at the plate with a solo home run in the top of the ninth to make it 3-1 Boston and Aroldis Chapman redeemed himself from a blown save 24 hours earlier, pitching a clean ninth inning to earn the save and prevent a White Sox sweep.
Up Next
Following an off day Monday, the Athletics come to town for a three-game set against the White Sox. First pitch on Tuesday is set for 6:40 p.m. CT with Sean Burke on the mound for Chicago, and Jeffrey Springs tapped to take the hill for the A’s.