White Sox Rule 5 pick Shane Smith generated a lot of enthusiasm in his second outing of the spring for averaging 98.3 mph on the 15 four-seamers he threw. While Smith had reportedly spiked to such velocity heights in the Brewers organization on occasion, it's a solid four ticks over his four-seamer's average from last season, and it comes early in the process of stretching out, as the 24-year-old has largely been relegated to the bullpen in the past by injury and circumstance.
As far as early developments go, it's certainly a lot better than starting out four miles per hour slower than his previous norms. In these parts, considering how things could be worse is never a waste of time, since an awful spring record proved not to be a fluke last season.
In his Cactus League debut, Smith sat 96.8 mph with his heater, but the pitch drew criticism from all fronts. From Smith, he was simply unhappy with the location. Three first-inning walks led the Sox to pull the right-hander rather than allow him to open his spring with a 30-pitch frame, and by the time a minor league extra was done throwing gas on the fire, it was a 9-0 deficit in the team's Cactus League home opener.
For the White Sox's pitching leadership, which viewed the Red Sox staff throwing fewer than 40 percent fastballs last season as aspirational, they saw heaters on 23 of 32 pitches as an understandable sin of youth. But turning to velocity when behind in the count with runners on is how Brian Bannister, Ethan Katz, et. al, believe blowup innings happen, even if they understand why it's a particularly strong urge with Smith.
"The fastball really played last year with Milwaukee," said Bannister of Smith. "He can really spin the ball, and it's a natural cut supinator."
If you limit yourself to judging by results like called strikes and swings-and-misses, the fastball is the only pitch from Smith that was really playing throughout last year in the Brewers organization. It played well enough that later in the year, Smith decided to stop fighting the accidental, glove-side cutting action of his four-seamer and embrace it. And a lot of his spring focus has been tailored around crafting his breaking balls to be better suited to shine in concert with the consistent action from his heater.
"If I want to throw a bullet slider off of a cutter, it's knowing where that miss should be with the bullet," Smith said. "If I'm going to pound glove-side heaters, the sliders should be off of that tunnel."
But if there’s a single point to hone in on for why Smith was available in the Rule 5 draft and why the White Sox also pounced, it’s the right-hander’s changeup. Smith quite plainly didn’t have one at the end of 2024, and without the ability to even throw a typical four-seamer, let alone turn over his wrist to pronate a traditional changeup or “stay inside the baseball,” he wasn’t a good bet to develop one. Without a single pitch moving to the arm side, it was hard for the Brewers to project Smith into someone who could navigate through an opposing lineup twice or more, nor become an impact reliever pre-velocity jump.
Enter the White Sox, who have made developing changeup variants for pitchers who haven’t traditionally been able to throw them in the past their specialty in camp.
"It was electric in his first side, a heavy seam-effects changeup," Bannister said of Smith. "As we've gotten more into the technology and the physics behind newer changeup styles -- the kick change, the seam-effects changeups -- we have a lot of guys who are really prime candidates to have seam effects on their fastball, tremendous spin and shape on their breaking ball, and then we've gotten really creative on creating the changeup side of the equation. There are a lot of guys out there who have really plus qualities in all three of those areas."
A common description from the likes of Noah Schultz, Sean Burke, Jake Eder and other White Sox pitchers who have embraced a seam-effects changeup over the past year is how the process resembles throwing a cutter, something they’re comfortable with given their pre-existing feel for spinning breaking balls, yet nonetheless produces a pitch that sinks while falling to the arm side. With Smith's pre-existing proclivities, it feels even more natural.
"I don't know all the ins and outs," Smith said of throwing his changeup. "Obviously Bannister does because he's a very smart guy. I don't try to get inside of [the baseball] at all. I just try to get it out front and throw it as well as I can. I would say it's more similar to my fastball and the way I try to release it. Curveball and slider you're trying to do something to it out front. Changeup, I'm just trying to throw it."
For Smith, the early returns have resembled a fastball in the sense that he’s throwing his changeup so hard that it’s been registering as a fastball on Statcast and Synergy. Pitch tracking systems have read a low-90s offering with running and dropping action as a sinker, but the sub-1600 RPM spin rate gives it away as the changeup.
Traditionally, to say a pitcher throws a 92 mph changeup is a polite way to say that they lack the feel for taking velocity off to throw the pitch effectively. But the movement allows Smith to operate on both sides of the plate more reliably, and if he’s going to hit the 98-99 mph range with his four-seamer, his changeup is closer to average velocity separation than it appears on first impression.
Even if all it's generated in games is foul balls and a groundout, the White Sox aren't exactly couching their praise.
"He's added a devastating changeup," said pitching coach Ethan Katz. "Shane Smith didn't have a changeup, and now he has a plus-plus changeup."
Smith isn’t established enough to set his goals farther than stretching out for as long as the White Sox tell him to do so. On top of veteran right-handed Bryse Wilson on a guaranteed contract being part of the glut of competitors for the fifth-starter gig, Smith’s bid for a starting role is also inhibited by a light record of professional work -- he's never shouldered 100 innings nor 20 starts in a season -- that will have the Sox cautiously building up his workload.
But as often will be the case for this 2025 White Sox roster, the question of what they have in Smith is overshadowed by what sort of template for future projects will they have if this turns into a success story.
"The changeups were blowing me away with how much better they were," Bannister said of the White Sox arms in camp. "That's a testament to the PD staff, the coaches, the players being willing to buy in and actually put in the work this offseason to come back with a new weapon. It'll be fun to see. It's not just Davis Martin, it'll be a few other guys who have ticked up a couple notches on their changeup quality."
