Top 2 pitching prospects give White Sox glimpse of future (2024)

CHICAGO -- Noah Schultz took the mound for Double-A Birmingham Saturday night, with the No. 1 White Sox prospect and No. 14 overall, per MLB Pipeline, striking out seven over four scoreless innings in his 21st start of the season and 14th for the Barons.

Somewhere around 370 miles away, Hagen Smith grabbed the baseball for his first career home start with High-A Winston-Salem, notching a K and allowing one earned run in 2 2/3 innings. The fellow southpaw, ranked as the No. 3 White Sox prospect and No. 31 overall, had his Minor League debut last Saturday after being selected fifth overall in the 2024 Draft from Arkansas.

So there is some level of good news for the White Sox, despite their 5-3 loss to the Mets Saturday on the Major League side. Chicago dropped its ninth straight, marking its third losing streak of at least nine this season. And with a 31-106 record, the White Sox tied the single-season franchise mark for losses set in 1970. They dipped to 4-35 after the All-Star break and 18-53 at home on the season.

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Schultz, who turned 21 on Aug. 5, was the team’s top pick in the 2022 Draft and is the top left-handed pitching prospect in the game, according to MLB Pipeline. He has cruised through Southern League competition with a 1.35 ERA, striking out 62 and walking 16 over 53 1/3 innings.

For his career, Schultz has a 2.01 ERA in 31 starts across three Minor League tiers, with 142 strikeouts against 29 walks in 107 2/3 innings. Those are numbers befitting a top-of-the-rotation hurler in the making.

“His stuff is super-ultra high-quality. It’s borderline elite,” White Sox pitching coordinator Matt Zaleski told MLB.com of Schultz. “Watching some of the games, you see some of the umpires struggling with some of the movement on his pitches in Double-A.

“I’ll have the Trackman pulled up and there are balls in the zone that are getting called balls and it can be frustrating because his pitch count ends up going up because of it. That’s not going to be the case at the higher level, which is encouraging. He’s still managing to get his four [innings] and 65 pitches almost every start and cruise through starts with pretty much ease.”

Zaleski has Schultz projected at 95 innings for the season, with the aforementioned per-start innings/pitch limit. That season total might end up getting near 100 innings if the Barons make the second round of the playoffs.

Don’t look for Smith to pitch for Birmingham in the upcoming postseason after his third and final regular-season start on Sept. 7. The White Sox had a good back-and-forth with Smith and his agent concerning how his second half would look after he struck out 161 in 84 innings for Arkansas this year, according to White Sox senior advisor to pitching Brian Bannister, who strongly believes in not de-loading pitchers too much.

“Giving him some options, let them talk about it and ultimately we got to a point like, ‘Go out there and compete a little bit,’” Bannister said. “So it was fun to see him bring his electric arm into professional baseball and throw well.

“It’s always tricky when you’ve had a good season. You’ve been at the top of the college game. You go out there and kind of reset and throw a few outings at the end of a Minor League season, where it’s new surroundings with new teammates. But it was a fun outing to watch.”

Smith, who ranks as the No. 2 left-handed pitching prospect overall behind Schultz, is expected to join Schultz with the White Sox at some point during the 2025 season. Prospect development often isn’t linear, so a great start to their respective Minor League careers might come with a few hiccups.

Take shortstop Colson Montgomery, as an example. The No. 2 White Sox prospect (No. 27 overall) had a plethora of big league promotion talk attached to his name as far back as the Arizona Fall League last year. He doesn’t appear to be receiving a September callup, with outfielder Zack DeLoach and right-hander Jairo Iriarte expected to get that honor Sunday. But that September omission won’t preclude Montgomery from breaking Spring Training with the White Sox next season.

“I didn’t see a lot of Colson. What I saw, I liked,” White Sox interim manager Grady Sizemore said of Montgomery, who is hitting .206 with 14 homers with Triple-A Charlotte. “I know it probably hasn’t been the best year for him and there’s been some struggles.

“That’s to be expected for a young player. Colson is a big part of the future -- we’re going to see him a lot.”