Nitting up the Crochet promotion

The 2020 baseball season has been one for aggressive promotions of young players. It makes sense, there is no minor league season for young players to get reps. Of course there are the “alternate sites”, but truthfully, that’s not real baseball, that’s practice.

The White Sox went aggressively, bringing up Dane Dunning, Bernardo Flores Jr., Jonathan Stiever, Jimmy Lambert, Matt Foster, Codi Heuer and Zack Burdi. Some of these guys I expected to be in Chicago even if the season wasn’t as weird as it possibly can, some others I wouldn’t have dreamed of showing up, but….shit happens. However, despite hearing all after the draft that it was possible, I just didn’t see this coming at all.

That’s right, the White Sox promoted a guy who they drafted, THIS YEAR. It’s rare, but it does happen (HI CHRIS SALE!!!), even more rare is calling up a guy who didn’t play any minor league ball, but the COVID-19 year of 2020 is some shit. Per the internets….

Crochet is expected to work out of the bullpen for the White Sox this year (for the rest of the regular season and possibly the playoffs), which also makes sense, as a fair amount of us were dumbfounded when the White Sox made no moves at the deadline for bullpen arms, when it was pretty clear that they could use a couple tree of them to musk up before heading off to the big dance.

I was particularly bummed that a reliable reliever like Archie Bradley went to the Reds for reasonable return, but I digress. This is the type of move that the White Sox are choosing to make and although it’s risky, it’s still something.

One little wrinkle to this promotion, with Crochet coming to the 28 man roster he’s automatically on the 40 man (no duh Beef!), which means that NEXT YEAR, the 2021 season, when the White Sox send him to A ball or whatever the fuck to train him to be a starting pitcher, he’ll use a minor league option, which puts him on the clock…….Each player is only allowed 3 minor league options (with some exceptions), which means, this promotion in 2020 is going to force Crochet to come along as a starter (assuming the White Sox stay that course) faster than normal.

Maybe that’s fine, because maybe he’ll kick minor league hitters balls in and be back in the majors in no time, BUT, this is the problem we just ran into with Carson Fulmer. He similarly got an early promotion to help out in the majors and started burning options and before you knew it, he was out of them and you couldn’t hide him in the minors anymore. Like I said, maybe Crochet will dominate, but if he doesn’t this is a maneuver that could have him in a crunch later on…during a year of potential White Sox contention. For a guy with only 13 starts in college, it might be a lot to ask.

-BeefLoaf