One game shy of season’s halfway mark, Sox fall to 21-59.
Manager Pedro Grifol had a strategy for trying to contain Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani.
“Yeah, try not to pitch to him,” Grifol said before the White Sox lost 3-0 to the Dodgers on Monday in front of 25,070 fans at Guaranteed Rate Field. “He’s one of the hottest hitters on the planet right now.”
Ohtani had homered in his previous three games, but Sox left-hander Garrett Crochet, who tossed 5 2/3 innings of scoreless ball, also is hot with a 1.53 ERA in his last 11 starts. And he challenged Ohtani and cooled him off, as well, striking him out in the first and fifth innings and getting the left-handed slugger on a groundout in the third.
Grifol pulled Crochet with his pitch count at 91, a workload-management move as Crochet, whose career high for innings was 54 1/3 innings in 2021 as a reliever, reached 94 1/3 innings.
“I could throw 130 pitches and be cool. That’s how I felt like I was tonight,” Crochet said. “But with where the innings are at, I definitely understand where everybody’s coming from, trying to monitor things. But every game matters, so I want to pitch every game like it’s going to be my last.
