The White Sox have a pitching problem, and it’s not the kind that can be solved by hoping a few arms suddenly find their footing. Noah Schultz has an ERA above 6.00.
Erick Fedde has already been pushed into a relief role. Davis Martin, who spent much of the year as the club’s ace, has fallen apart in the second half.
Anthony Kay has been useful, but not flawless. Sean Burke can’t carry the whole staff alone.
Luis Castillo arrived before the trade deadline and has already given the Sox one strong start and one rough one. Even with Hagen Smith and Tanner McDougal moved up to help the bullpen, and David Sandlin shuttling between Triple-A and the majors, the rotation still needs help.
In all of that noise, Shane Smith has gotten lost.
That’s a mistake.
The White Sox grabbed Smith in the Rule 5 Draft heading into the 2025 season, and he rewarded them with a rotation spot and 146.1 innings of 3.81 ERA ball. On paper, that’s a solid year.
But the numbers don’t fully capture how overwhelming he could look when everything was clicking. He was knocked around in a few outings, including starts on July 1 against the Dodgers and September 16 against the Orioles, when he allowed six runs in each game.
Still, he also delivered six shutout starts, and every one of those outings lasted at least five innings. That was enough to get him to the All-Star team.
The Sox made him their Opening Day starter for 2026 and expected another big season, ideally with better consistency and the same overpowering stuff. Instead, Smith told Sox Machine that he altered his delivery in the offseason, and the change hurt his fastball command. Once that went, so did the rest of his game.
He made three starts in the big league rotation this year and never got through the fourth inning. The strike zone disappeared on him. Smith’s whole approach depends on throwing his fastball with authority and living in the zone, and when that stopped happening, the results were brutal: a 10.80 ERA across those three major league appearances.
The Sox sent him to Triple-A to try to rediscover his old delivery, but then the season went sideways again when he suffered a rotator cuff injury. That put him on the injured list in May, and he didn’t come back until July 12. He was sent back to Charlotte, and there hasn’t been much public indication about when, or even if, he would return to the majors.
I get why the White Sox took the cautious route after the injury. But with the season nearing its end, Smith deserves another look in Chicago before this year is over.
His work in Charlotte hasn’t been spotless. He’s had outings where he’s allowed one run and others where he’s given up four.
In July, he made four starts for the Knights and posted a 5.17 ERA. He’s been working around four innings per outing, and he’s allowing too much traffic for those shorter starts, with both hits and walks adding up.
Even so, his most recent start on August 13 was encouraging: six innings, three hits, one walk and one run.
That kind of outing matters now because the White Sox are in first place in the AL Central and looking toward the postseason. The level of competition is only going to rise, and their pitching staff is going to be pushed harder.
They need their best arms available, and Smith is still one of the best arms in the organization. Keeping him buried in Triple-A for the rest of the year would be a waste.
He’s been in MiLB since 2022 and reached Triple-A in 2024. At this point, there isn’t much left for him to prove there. A reset can only last so long.
Maybe the White Sox bring him back as a bulk reliever and let him work back toward the rotation. Maybe he comes up as a swingman or spot starter if the team hits an early exit.
Either way, they’ve got an All-Star-level arm sitting in the minors. It’s time to use him.
In Other News...
Tim Andersons Retirement Reopens A Painful White Sox Debate
Tim Andersons retirement closes the book on one of the most electric stretches a White Sox player has produced in years, and it brings back memories of the moments that made him a centerpiece in Chicago. He was at the heart of the franchises rise under the rebuild, an All-Star shortstop whose speed, bat-to-ball skill and swagger gave the club a face during a period when the White Sox were trying to move from promise to contender. His walk-off homer in the 2021 Field of Dreams game remains one of the signature swings of that era, the kind of play that made it easy to imagine a long and layered career in Chicago.
But Andersons story also sits inside a bigger, more uncomfortable conversation about how the White Sox handled a player who ran into injuries, off-field issues and a shifting team environment. As the organizations rebuild stalled and managerial decisions changed around him, Andersons path became harder to separate from the broader questions about the franchises direction and whether the right support was ever in place. His retirement does not settle that debate so much as reopen it, because for White Sox fans the memory of what Anderson was supposed to become is still tangled up with what the organization became around him. [Read more 🡒]
White Sox Prospects Gave Fans Another Reason To Watch The Pipeline
The White Sox farm system kept giving the organization reasons to pay attention as the affiliates split their five-game slate, with Winston-Salem and Kannapolis coming away on the right side of the results. It was the kind of night that reminds fans why the pipeline matters, especially when a few players across the system start stacking together the sort of performances that can change how a season feels in the minors.
Kyle Lodise headlined the bats with two home runs, while Ronald Cardozo also left the yard as Kannapolis helped itself to a win. On the mound, Noah Schultz turned in a strong outing for Charlotte and Fabian Ysalla did the same for Kannapolis, giving the White Sox another look at the kind of pitching depth that can make the organization easier to watch even before the big league club gets the call-ups. [Read more 🡒]