White Sox Plan For All-Star Shane Smith To Make Scheduled Starts Rest Of Season

CHICAGO –– Shane Smith has been one of the most positive stories of the 2025 White Sox season, and finishing strong is the plan over the final month and change.

After selecting him first overall in December's Rule 5 Draft, Smith represented the White Sox in the MLB All-Star game as a rookie right-handed pitcher. He also went through a rough patch, allowing 21 earned runs across 15.1 innings and four starts in June and July, and hit the injured list shortly after with a sprained ankle.

Responding to that adversity with a few solid starts of late has also been a promising sign for manager Will Venable, who's been impressed by Smith in a variety of ways this season.

"You know that every player's gonna go through their ups and downs, and that it's really about what it looks like when you get back on track and the process to do that," Venable said. "He's done a great job. He works extremely hard. The coaches talk about it all the time, his teammates talk about it all the time that he's just a guy that's 100% dedicated to this and doing everything he can to be better. It's nice to see him succeed and then have tough spots and then go right back to being where he wants to be. So the overall progression of his development this year has been great."

The season has also tested Smith's limits. Up to 22 starts and 107 innings in his first Major League season, Smith has set a career-high for the second straight season after pitching 94.1 innings last season with the Milwaukee Brewers' Double-A and Triple-A affiliates.

With the 45-83 White Sox out of the playoff race, preserving Smith's health for future seasons is part of the equation. But for now, the team expects Smith to make his scheduled starts the rest of the way.

"I think we just move forward start by start with him. Having benefited from that break, I think he can continue to make his starts and we should be in an okay spot," manager Will Venable said Friday. "Again, like we've said for a while now, we're just taking it start by start and as things change and rest in between starts might fluctuate, maybe it's a five-inning start and not pushing him in the sixth. But I think he's in a good spot to go ahead and make his starts for the rest of the year."

In his last outing on Tuesday against the Atlanta Braves, he threw a season-high 101 pitches across six innings with four earned runs. That seems to be about the limit for Smith, given that he hasn't pitched more than six innings in any start this season.

Though Venable wasn't managing the White Sox last season, general manager Chris Getz has experience monitoring pitchers' innings. He did so in 2024 with Garrett Crochet, who didn't pitch more than four innings in any start from July 6 until the end of the season and finished with 32 starts and 146 innings before being traded to the Boston Red Sox in December.

The White Sox didn't shut down Crochet, instead letting him pitch shorter outings, and they have no plans to shut down Smith as the season winds down. Smith's next start is scheduled for Monday against the Kansas City Royals.

"We have talked through different solutions to make sure we're doing the right thing and kind of committed to taking it one start at a time," Venable said Aug. 9. "And as we've explored options to this point, shutting guys down is not something we've talked about yet. So that's just not where we're at. We're gonna find different solutions and be mindful, and again, we'll take it start by start."

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