After turning in an All-Star season in his first season in the big leagues, the Chicago White Sox named Shane Smith their Opening Day starter, but just two starts into the 2026 season, the former Rule 5 draft pick has looked like anything but an ace.
After getting yanked in the second inning of Opening Day, allowing three runs, three hits, and a pair of walks against the Milwaukee Brewers, Smith followed that with an even uglier outing against the Miami Marlins.
The good news was that Smith made it out of the second inning. The bad news is that he only lasted three innings. With a White Sox bullpen already taxed, pitching 20.2 innings in the first five games, the team desperately needed Smith to eat innings. Instead, Will Venable was forced to turn to his relievers early once again after Smith was pulled, having given up eight runs on seven hits with a pair of walks.
Adding insult to injury, he also committed a costly throwing error in the first inning, which turned what could have been at least the second out of the inning into an early jam he was unable to escape.
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The season is still young, and there’s plenty to like about Smith, but the red flags are hard to ignore. In just 4.2 innings, he has already surrendered 11 hits and four walks vs. just two strikeouts. This comes after he issued nine free passes and was tagged for 13 runs in just 10.2 innings in Spring Training.
Smith’s struggles to pitch deep into games are nothing new. Even during his All-Star season, when he posted a 3.81 ERA, he walked 9.1% of batters and allowed plenty of hard contact, ranking in the bottom third of the league in average exit velocity. As a result, he averaged just five innings per start across his 29 outings last season.
Consistency also emerged as an issue for the 25-year-old right-hander last season. After starting the season allowing three runs or less in his first eight starts, he got tagged for 22 earned runs in a four-game stretch between June 17 and July 6.
None of this is to say that Smith can’t be a piece of the rotation moving forward. But at this point, he looks more like a third or fourth starter than an ace. His early struggles have not only strained the bullpen, but they have also taken the White Sox out of two games that should have at least been competitive with the No. 1 starter on the bump.
In an organization that has four pitchers on its top 10 prospect list, including two arms ranked among MLB Pipeline’s top-100 prospects, it will be interesting to see how long a leash Smith will get.
The Charlotte Knights alone boast a rotation of Hagen Smith, Noah Schultz, Tanner McDougal, David Sandlin, and Jonathan Cannon, who all, in theory, could get starts in the big league rotation this year.
Smith still has minor league options and could benefit from a reset in Triple-A. The White Sox found success with a similar approach last season, sending Colson Montgomery, who was struggling in Triple-A, to Arizona to work on his swing with hitting director Ryan Fuller.
It’s a strategy that the White Sox couldn’t use last season when Smith hit a rough patch, because as a Rule 5 pick, he was required to stay on the big-league roster all year, or risk being offered back to the Milwaukee Brewers.
Smith is an easy guy to root for. After being a relative unknown minor leaguer, he emerged as one of the best breakout storylines of 2025. But it’s fair to wonder if he was a one-year wonder, now that teams have a large sample size of tape to work off of.
It’s still too early for a drastic reset in the minor leagues, but the cracks in Smith’s game are glaring. If he continues at this current rate, difficult questions are going to have to be asked.
