Early in his 2021 All-Star season while standing behind protective netting at Target Field, Carlos Rodón balanced his ample frame on one leg. Flipping between resting his weight on his back heel, and hopping up onto the ball of his foot, Rodón demonstrated the primary mechanical switch that had restored him to consistent upper-90s velocity.
Four years later, his slider-spinning left-handed White Sox pitching prospect analogue Hagen Smith ... sat at a Zoom camera in Arizona and discussed his season after being named to the American League Fall Stars roster. A 2.57 ERA in 14 innings with 21 strikeouts earned Smith the honor, and some ebullient praise from teammate Sam Antonacci.
"Especially just the last outing, it was kind of like 'Whoa.'" Antonacci said. "He's come a long way."
But six weeks prior, senior advisor to pitching Brian Bannister stood in for the 22-year-old former fifth overall pick, and mimed out how Smith had altered his delivery. First, he demonstrated lifting his front leg and tilting inward drastically, counter-rotating so that his shoulders tilted toward the plate, falling toward it with his torso as his legs came along for the ride. This was a rough representation of what was ailing Smith's delivery in the first half of the season, as he walked 18.7 percent of hitters before being shut down with elbow soreness in early May.
"It’s being slow," Smith said of his most important delivery cue. "For me, I feel like I’m never going fast enough, and that’s not the case at all on the mound. So with my body, I just kind of try to be really slow, and I’m not going to be slow. So mentally that’s where I’m at right now. It’s helping me be more consistent in the zone and getting ahead early."
Smith's emphasis on pace and moving slower aligns with Bannister's demonstration of his newer delivery. Here, he lifts up his front leg and sort of kicks it in place, keeping his shoulders square and relatively still until his back leg is loaded to push him forward. It gives the appearance of moving slower, even it's simply more controlled rather than rushing to correct imbalances.
The outbursts of walks have remained in Smith's game, though a 10.5 percent rate through 14 AFL innings represents improvement the White Sox will happily take into his now-abbreviated offseason. But Bannister contends his stuff has been more consistent, and similar to the early years of Rodón's career, he argues that maxing out Smith's stuff is a more likely route to initial success than a huge command leap that might come with time. With at least one outing left in his AFL run, Smith is within two frames of his 2024 innings total (91⅔ while feeling like he's sprinting through the finish line.
"I feel awesome, honestly. I feel like I have a really good routine that keeps me feeling good," Smith said. "After the injury, just kind of taking a step back and looking at what I was doing wrong and what I wasn’t doing. Just coming back from that, I felt honestly really, really good every single week."
Smith assessed his 2025 season as "just all right," with "some ups and downs," that he's viewing as educational long-term. His ability to manipulate and vary shapes and speeds of his slider teases Smith's potential to survive with just two offerings if need be, but his AFL focus has been trying to wedge in opportunities to try out his split-change as much as possible.
His draft status, the internal expectations for Smith, and the rapid success of fellow college starters in his draft class like Trey Yesavage and Chase Burns builds anticipation for him to impact the majors soon. But while Smith's prospect stock has absorbed a dent this season, it hasn't been an abnormal path yet for a stuff-over-command young, and he's trying not to rush himself through it.
"I still got one more outing, potentially two here, so that's what I'm looking at right now," Smith said when asked about 2026. "I don't really have any expectations. Just come in [to spring training], be ready. I can only control how I throw, so that's really all I'm focused on."
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Jim's initial AFL update found Antonacci scuffling through his first 36 plate appearances against what he admits are "a lot of better arms," and slashing .226/.333/.387 in Arizona's nutty offensive environment.
Just 46 plate appearances later, Antonacci is putting up Coastal Carolina numbers again to earn Fall Stars honors, with a .379/.506/.515 overall triple slash and a couple of homers that show even his contact-oriented brand of offense (he has 14 walks and 10 strikeouts) has the ability to enjoy the transition from Regions Field in Birmingham.
"The ball flies a lot better," Antonacci said, smirking slightly as he uncoiled the following line. "Some balls that you know you get actually go outside the fence, rather than an outfielder coming in."
Antonacci didn't feel like there was any great adjustment period he went through that aligned with the uptick in results. And since this is probably the fifth or sixth time in his life where he was supposed to encounter a new level of talented opposition and just kept on chugging and putting up numbers, he doesn't recognize his AFL success as an especially meaningful benchmark.
"I would say it’s no confidence booster because you’re not in the big leagues putting up these numbers," Antonacci said. "I don’t really want to be known as a good Fall League player. I want to be known as a productive big leaguer that brings a championship here to Chicago. But, it’s obviously better than not succeeding here."
Obviously if Antonacci is just a true talent .400 OBP guy in the majors, his positional fit will work itself out in time. But at the current state of affairs where his prospect projection has him closer to a Chase Meidroth variant, Antonacci's defense will need to continue to improve. As during the season, he's mixed in at three different spots on the infield dirt in Glendale, but seems best suited for second base long-term and has been observing and picking elements from the different pre-pitch setups of his teammates in the AFL.
Fortunately, a hallmark of Antonacci's progression is that the work ethic can be trusted to be there, and will probably be asserted with at least one borderline scary quote, or two.
"Obviously I'll probably take a few days off just because I've got to drive home," Antonacci said of his offseason plans. "A lot of people say they want to take a week off or take a month off, but I just like to keep going. I don't believe in burnout."
