CLEVELAND -- Dec. 11, 2024: Chicago White Sox traded LHP Garrett Crochet to Boston Red Sox for the starting catcher, second baseman and right fielder on a team that will be on the doorstep of the ALCS in 663 days.
If only the transaction wire warned us, huh?
When the Sox put themselves up, 2-0, in the best-of-five ALDS against the rival Guardians on Monday night at Progressive Field, they did it with a huge boost from a huge trade. Right in the middle of this 4-3 win that has the Sox a win away from their first ALCS appearance since 2005 were game-altering hits off the bats of Kyle Teel, Chase Meidroth and Braden Montgomery.
Fitting for a South Side squad that seems to have hit on all three of those pieces from the swap of Crochet, whose Red Sox held their postmortem press conference Wednesday.
“Those three players have come up so big for us, not only in the playoffs, but throughout the season,” White Sox general manager Chris Getz said. “Obviously, a significant acquisition when you're moving someone like a Garrett Crochet. But to get the return that we got, we felt good about it at the time, and man, we feel good about it now, too.”
(The fourth prospect in the deal, right-hander Wikelman González, was claimed off waivers by the Marlins in August. But hey, there’s one in every crowd.)
Teel, who was the headliner of the prospect haul in that trade as the No. 25 overall prospect on MLB Pipeline’s list at the time, had the leadoff single in the fourth when trailing, 2-0, that led to Chicago’s first run.
Even more impressive, though, is his work with a pitching staff that is trying to mix and match its way to the Promised Land with openers, bullpen games and unorthodox arrangements like “starter” Sean Burke coming into this one with one out in the third. That’s no easy task for a young catcher with only 117 regular-season games of Major League experience (Teel missed much of this year with injuries) coming into this postseason.
“He's a really smart guy, but he's really well prepared,” manager Will Venable said of Teel. “And that preparation is stuff that he does on his own. It's work that he does with the pitching coaches. It's also work that he does with someone like [catcher] Drew Romo, who is not active on our roster, but has a really big hand in our preparation and presence in the clubhouse and kind of how we go about some certain things.”
When the Sox flipped this game on its head in the sixth inning, the trade keyed the turnaround.
Montgomery was the No. 54 overall prospect at the time of the deal. The young switch-hitter has had struggles from the right-hand side (.430 OPS), but he was in that batter’s box when he faced lefty Erik Sabrowski with two on and two out and ripped the two-run double to right that gave the Sox the go-ahead. It was the clutchest moment yet from a kid who was the fifth MLB player to hit a walk-off homer in his MLB debut back in June.
“He has worked extremely hard and is very committed to this process,” Venable said of Montgomery. “He works extremely hard on both sides of the plate, gives himself a chance. I know throughout the season, specifically on the right side, it has been a little bit more of a struggle for him, but he's continued to grind. Obviously, that is a huge swing right there.”
Progressive Field was still in stunned silence after Montgomery’s heroics when Meidroth came to bat against Hunter Gaddis and plated what turned out to be the winning run with a single to right. With a growth in power to go with his elite defense, Meidroth (No. 11 in Boston’s system at the time of the deal) was simply one of the best second basemen in baseball this season. In this mammoth moment, his tongue wagged as he bolted out of the batter’s box.
It was another of the many highlights of this predominantly young Sox squad that has won with camaraderie, particularly among the players shipped off together from Boston.
“We all have that connection,” Teel said. “And then this organization does a great job of developing us and helping us get better.”
Baseball often forces you to pick a lane. In the winter after a historically bad 2024 season, the White Sox were level-headed enough to know that Crochet’s emergence as an ace did not align with their true timetable. He had accrued four years of big league service despite limited time on the mound because of injuries. He was a success story on a big league team with too few of them.
Parting with Crochet meant pain. And with pain comes prospects. But getting prospects that actually amount to anything is a lot more difficult than we like to admit.
At this year’s Trade Deadline, when we looked at every instance of an MLB Pipeline Top 100 prospect being dealt, we found that a whopping 76.2% had gone on to accrue less than 5 career bWAR.
There are museums of Greek and Roman antiquities with fewer busts than that.
So that accentuates all the more what the Sox have accomplished here. It’s a major reason why they’ve gone from three straight 100-loss seasons to one win away from the ALCS.
“Those decisions are difficult,” Getz said. “I mean, we've made plenty of trades that we feel good about, and then there's some that maybe you like to take back. I think the key takeaway is certainly the process that leads you to that particular decision. You've got to take your chances, you've got to take your shots. Those players have all done their part, and we just want to continue to support them.”