Just how good was Garrett Crochet’s Opening Day start?

In White Sox history? 79th percentile ... not bad for a first career effort

Yes, it’s been an incredibly long week and especially endless day, but Garrett Crochet’s surprise excellence on Opening Day — pitching at least one inning and exceedingly sharper than anyone had the right to expect — I had to dig deeper into where his effort lands in White Sox history.

At least per game score (version two, a Tom Tango 2016 update of Bill James’ original musing): pretty darn good.

Among 126 Opening Day starts in White Sox history (124 seasons, plus doubleheader openers in 1971 and 1982), Crochet’s line score lands in a tie with Chris Sale’s effort one decade ago for the 26th-best in club history. And among starts of six innings or fewer, Crochet’s masterpiece on Thursday rings in as the No. 1 game score in White Sox opener history — yep, what he lacked in stamina was more than offset with ruthless efficiency.

While game score is no perfect metric — it’s such a basic sketch it hardly even qualifies as such — it touches on all the basics of starting pitcher effort: innings, hits, runs, Ks, walks, homers. So take this all with a grain of baseline chalk.

Here are the Top 10 and Worst 10 Opening Day starts in White Sox history:

The Top 10

• Frank Smith’s all-time best White Sox opener effort, in 1910, was a one-hit shutout
• Eddie Lopat in 1947, Wilbur Wood in 1976 and Mark Buehrle in 2005 also were shutouts
• Billy Pierce in 1957 and Lefty Williams in 1920 both went 11 innings to earn their top scores
• Only one game in the Top 10 was a loss: Bill Dietrich’s heartbreaker in 1946
• Dylan Cease’s amazing Opening Day win in 2023 is tied for 11th all-time, an 81 game score

The Bottom 10

• Not altogether surprisingly but still a bit shocking: Five of the 10-worst Opening Days ever thrown have come in the 21st Century, despite this era comprising approximately 20% of seasons in White Sox history
• Indicative of how good the 1963 White Sox would turn out to be, the club won Ray Herbert’s 12 game score start, the sixth-worst in team history
• Poor Vern Kennedy; he not only authored the only negative game score in White Sox Opening Day history — it was the only time he got the ball to start Opening Day!
• José Contreras’ one-inning start in 2007, resulting in the second-worst Opening Day game score for the White Sox all-time, was matched in duration on just one other occasion: Lefty Williams, beginning the championship 1917 season