Pregame notes: Latest round of White Sox cuts includes a Rule 5 pick

As anticipated, Hagen Smith's crisp two innings on Sunday were his swan song as a member of major league camp. He was part of slew of reassignments (not options) to minor league camp the Sox announced Monday afternoon, and none of the half dozen involved were seriously expected to grab hold of a 40-man roster spot by the end of March.

• LHP Hagen Smith (will start in Triple-A)
• RHP Tyson Miller
• OF Dru Baker
• OF Dustin Harris
• INF Oliver Dunn
• William Bergolla Jr.

Shane Smith threw five innings in a minor league game on Sunday, which reflects the degree to which the White Sox have staggered Hagen Smith's ramp-up, in response to him completing his 98⅔ innings of work last season in the Arizona Fall League. That staggering will extend to Smith's opening outings at Charlotte early on, but the Sox are hopeful that will allow him to finish out the season making full-length starts, rather than the sort of late-season tapering that Tanner McDougal, Christian Oppor and Shane Murphy went through last year.

Reason being: Smith's end-of-year outings are expected to be in Chicago.

"We may err on the side of tapering his workload early," said farm director Paul Janish. "In a perfect world, he's healthy and hopefully gets the opportunity to pitch in the big leagues this year, and it's full-go through the end of the season."

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Alexander Alberto was only a measure less of a longshot to break camp with the club than these six, since he was the second of two Rule 5 picks, has no experience above High-A, and recently saw his Cactus League ERA balloon to 10.80 in 6⅔ innings. But his presence in White Sox camp is conditional upon staying on the major league roster.

A source says Alberto has been placed on waivers, which is a step teams have to take when they decide not to carry a Rule 5 pick on the 26-man roster. If Alberto clears waivers, the Rays have a choice of paying back half of the $100,000 selection fee they collected and taking back Alberto, keeping the money and letting the Sox send Alberto to the minors, or working out a trade. There are a lot of permutations, but the fundamental takeaway is the Sox clearly decided Alberto was not going to make the Opening Day roster.

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Everyone loves it when jaded writers explain why some news that seems mildly surprising isn't that surprising. It's the height of sports commentary. Let's do a round.

Despite a late start, Braden Montgomery cooked in 12 games in the AFL, slashing .366/.527/.634 with more walks than strikeouts. Nutty offensive environment, nutty production to match. But even if we counted the AFL and the Southern League as all roughly Double-A in quality -- and talk about some disparate styles of baseball to lump together -- Montgomery has played fewer than 50 games above A-ball and he's produced around strikeout and contact rates that are well worse than the league average.

That's fine, it was his first year of pro baseball, he was a two-way player early in college and has two swings to work on. There are issues the Sox are grinding through with him that represent why "super-physical and super-productive college player" doesn't automatically equal a near-finished product.

"Braden is very clear on understanding, it's [about] making more contact to let him have his physicality show," said hitting director Ryan Fuller. "And when we make contact, hitting it at solid angles too. The right side hits more balls on a line, the left is a little bit more ground-ball prone. He's very aware of those issues and he's one of our best trainers in here where he wants Trajekt as much as he can so he can see those shapes and understand how to attack those baseballs and hit them at a good angle."

First Pitch: White Sox at Rangers

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