Shane Smith’s fastball has been worth leaning on

It's been two months now, and White Sox rookie Shane Smith's velocity is still up, but not in a way that dominates the conversation.

He's averaging 94.9 mph on his four-seamer this season with plenty of higher spikes, but he also averaged 94.1 mph last year. Every game where Smith comes out for the sixth -- which has only been one out of his last seven starts -- he's pitching so well and so efficiently to overcome the White Sox inclinations to curb his workload, since he's already over halfway (53⅓ IP) to clearing his career-high in innings (94⅓).

Yet Smith's outings have not been dictated by watching his fastball velocity as an indicator of wellness.

"Velo comes and goes, but if I can execute, good things can happen," Smith said after six shutout innings against the Marlins earlier this month, which was not meant to minimize the importance of the pitch, either.

"If I personally don't have my fastball, I probably don't have a lot that day. So making sure I'm executing with that and putting it in the right spot," Smith said in the same interview.

And when it comes to executing it and putting it in the right spot, Smith has good reason to talk up his heater. Only his freaky new seam-effects changeup is generating better results, and it's not like that success shouldn't be tied to how well he's commanded his velocity as well.

The over-performance from Statcast estimates helps explain why Smith is touting a 2.36 ERA when most expected metrics have him sitting in the mid-3s. But it also establishes why he feels his fastball has been competitive even in obvious fastball counts, allowing an easy route to controlling walks (8.1 percent) on a Sox pitching staff where most members are taught to avoid such situations.

"I can use it in most any count," Smith said of his four-seamer. "When guys get into 2-0 counts and think 'Oh it's an auto fastball here,' I feel comfortable throwing those because I feel like the results on the fastball have been pretty solid. I've gotten barreled on a couple. But I feel like most of my barrels have been offspeed pitches. Obviously Rafael Devers hit a homer on it, but that's going to happen. I'll live with that.

"It's just the pitch I feel comfortable to throwing anywhere on the plate, out, in, up, everywhere. It's just finding a good mix of going hard when I want to and then having them respect that so I can go soft. It's a fine mix."

The sort of cut-ride nature of Smith's fastball gives it below-average vertical ride, but he has some other strengths to fall back on. He has above-average extension in his delivery, which makes his above-average velocity play up a bit more. As pitching coach Ethan Katz has explained, his super-hard changeup is not a change of pace in terms of velocity, but in how hard it dives downward, making it easier for Smith to sneak his heater above the barrels of hitters who need to account for both. That also is part of why, despite not being effective on its own, he sprinkles in a sinker to keep hitters off his main fastball shape, because the positive effects are seen when he really needs to lean on the four-seamer.

"[Miami] was actually the first outing where I executed high fastballs more often than not," Smith said. "The second Minnesota game I tried to go up, and I'd miss or pull it glove side. Miami was probably the one where, we're getting to two strikes where it's 1-2 or 2-2, might as well go upstairs. It was to the point where it was competitive enough where it's two or three balls [in width] above the zone instead of five or six, because they see those out of hand and they're not going to swing. But a ball, two balls, three balls above the zone, that's where you get the swings and misses."

Smith's trust of his fastball command is backed up by his assertion that it has not been cutting unexpectedly on him this year. Still, the pitch has less armside movement than most four-seamers. Smith is hoping to leverage that element to better help him command the fastball up and away from right-handed hitters, and set up the breaking pitches that he relied on last season, but have underperformed and not generated much chase so far this year. The lack of chase on breakers hasn't been super relevant, since Smith has been dominant in the strike zone this year, but the nature of pitching and life is to want what you don't have.

"Establishing upstairs helps with, I feel like the changeup especially, but I don't throw the curve a ton. But if I'm going to be throwing upstairs I can develop free takes on spin; the curveball especially," Smith said. "With the slider, it's about can I hit glove side to righties? Can I throw glove-side fastballs? If I can do that, I can [throw] spin off it and throw spin underneath it. It's just developing."

The disastrous second inning at Wrigley that Smith endured the weekend before last was, well, mostly due to poor defense. But it also included three-straight extra-base hits off his slider that laid bare his work to stave off it turning into more of a cutter. When it ticks 90 mph or above, Smith explains that it lacks the dropping action to miss bats that it holds when he keeps it in the high-80s.

Asked repeatedly for lessons he's taken away from his first two months in the majors, Smith has regularly returned to the line of "my stuff is good enough," and seeing the work ahead of him as refinement rather than straining for ways to be competitive at the highest level. Finding the cues to throw his slider so hard that it stays on plane with barrels is in line is right in line with that.

"That's what I'd like to do, but as we well know, execution is a different thing," Smith said.

But watching a young player with the necessary talent figure things out is usually the more enjoyable part of watching a rebuilding team. And Smith's strong start to 2025 has been powered by trust that his fastball is a pretty good fallback option.