GLENDALE, Ariz. — With White Sox spring training winding down, Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith are the scheduled starting pitchers Saturday. Schultz will face the Rockies and Smith the Mariners in split squad games.
Neither will be on the Opening Day roster, but their Cactus League showcases will be the featured event of the day. So it goes with a rebuilding team that looks hard pressed to avoid a third straight 100-loss season.
The prized left-handers will open the season at Double-A Birmingham where, if you are a fan with no hope for this season but a glimmer of some down the road, the action will be.
Senior adviser to pitching Brian Bannister oozes optimism talking about that tandem, friends with unfriendly stuff, as well as 100-mph righty Grant Taylor. The Sox likely for a while lost right-hander Drew Thorpe, thought to be a potential core piece of the future, who made his debut last season. Thorpe encountered elbow problems last summer and winter and at spring training, but there still appears to be a nice stockpile of young pitching coming.
“We are seeing new exciting pitchers emerge,” Bannister, the son of former Sox pitcher Floyd Bannister, said.
At the major league level, there’s Opening Day starter Sean Burke, 26, Jonathan Cannon, 24, Davis Martin, 28 and Shane Smith, who turns 25 April 4. Behind Schultz, 21, Hagen Smith, 21, and Taylor, 22, on prospect watches are Jairo Iriarte, 23, with many of them likely suiting up for Double-A Birmingham to start the season.
“It’s going to be a special rotation in Birmingham,” Bannister said. “So when you get all those guys in the mix there is something special about having them play together, building that camaraderie, knowing how to build off each other, see each other with their different arsenals.
“There is an important element to keeping guys together and having this continuity.”
Skeptical fans will remind the Sox also had a stockpile of young pitching with Carlos Rodon, Garrett Crochet, Dylan Cease, Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech and Reynaldo Lopez not long ago, and look where it got them: A couple of in-and-out playoff burgers to munch on in 2020 and 2021.
Hence the latest rebuild, with big pitching brains like Bannister’s calling shots.
Perhaps the Sox will pony up and pay this coming new batch of pitchers when their contracts warrant raises, but that’s above Bannister’s pay grade.
In any case, he gave a nod to the man who pays the bills around here, Jerry Reinsdorf, for spending on a pitch lab and getting the Sox up to speed alongside other teams.
“Our pitching department as a whole is very exciting with the flow of information, the upgrades we’ve made to analytics, Jerry and [general manager] Chris [Getz] moving our lab down here with much better information, much faster turnaround times. In the past, it was a lengthy turnaround time to get good information back. Now you can get it back same day or the next day. We’ve been able to make very fast adjustments with this group.”
Arm injuries to Thorpe and Prelander Berroa and prospects Ky Bush, Juan Carela and Mason Adams are reminder that pitching labs can’t help pitchers who are hurt, so health is of the essence, as it is with every organization.
“We have a lot of top 100 prospects, we have a lot of quality players and we’ve gone out and identified good talent and we’ll continue to do so,” Bannister said. “[Scouting director] Mike Shirley on the amateur side has done a great job, David Keller on the international side, and so you want to build up this wave that fans can get excited about and kind of time it up where they’re all playing together,” Bannister said.
“And we can layer on with free agents and other outside players just to have depth to trade from, and all the fun things I know our fan base want to get to, but it all starts with a very special core and that’s what we have right now.”