As the two of us talked at length with White Sox starter Shane Smith in a back room on the second floor of the Ramova Theatre at SoxFest, Josh asked a question that attempted to turn the subtext into context. He queried Smith about carrying the weight of being the rotation's ace and likely Opening Day starter, and the 25-year-old right-hander reacted, albeit politely, like his body was rejecting a bad organ transplant.
"Being the ace is not something that anybody has said about me, and I don't think they should," Smith said. "And I don't think Opening Day is something that should be talked about until anybody says anything."
It was delivered more courteously than it reads, but Smith's firm stance against skipping any steps was clear. On Sunday, the White Sox made it clear that Smith is officially the Opening Day starter, but the idea that Josh wasn't wrong, just early, was already being drilled home with what the coaching staff was asking of Smith at the start of camp.
"We've got a bunch of guys that had their first real go of it last season, and now these guys are frankly some of the more experienced players here," said bench coach Walker McKinven said. "It speaks to the person, but we're empowering Shane Smith to take charge of this pitching staff. Smiling and talking about it with him, think about what a difference a year makes... dude, we're talking about you being a voice -- a loud voice -- on this pitching staff and leading by example and having guys follow you."
If the notion that effective one single, full season as a big league regular is enough experience for Smith, or Davis Martin, or Miguel Vargas, or Chase Meidroth, or any other notably vocal member of the White Sox core to become a clubhouse leader sounds a little rich, well, there's people in the organization who agree with you. Prominent ones.
Or it's better said, they used to agree with you. Then a new spring began and a new team identity formed.
"My game plan coming in was to take a more active role [than last season] with that more vocal leadership, knowing that we don't have Michael A. Taylor and Martín Pérez and that this has to come from somewhere," said Will Venable. "If you're going to be successful out there, you have to have adults in the room that are going to speak up for the things that are right, that hold guys accountable to the things that we've all created expectations for. And because we don't have the Michael Taylors and the Martín Pérezs, these guys are filling that void themselves, and that they're excited to do it."
Little by little, spring events have shifted Venable's thinking on this, to the point where you can see him casually asking Smith about it in the video the White Sox posted of their meeting with him, as if he's just requesting a regular status update.
But earlier in camp, Venable cited a specific example. Per his decree, White Sox players not scheduled to appear in home games -- since they obviously don't travel for road games -- are not required to attend nor be in uniform. Despite this, Venable was immediately met with a request from Martin on behalf of the entire pitching staff.
"He said, 'Hey, I know you said we don't have to come, but like, are you cool if all the pitchers come for the first three innings? Like, just don't want to create too much congestion in the dugout. But you know, that'd be something that would be important to us,'" Venable recalled. "I said, 'Hell yeah, that would be awesome.'"
On the position player side, Venable identified veterans like Andrew Benintendi and even non-roster invitee LaMonte Wade Jr. making a point of hanging around the dugout to support teammates long after they had been pulled, or on days they weren't in the lineup. And matching that energy after his two-inning spring debut in February was Smith, staying in the dugout and offering support through the fifth inning, before heading to the clubhouse for post-game arm care and media responsibilities, where he quickly sounded like a six-year veteran during the latter.
""I prefer not to throw 99 mph right now. If it didn't take a physical toll, it'd be cool. But it does, so..." Smith said. "Last year, every single day mattered so much. I don't think it's different. Every day still matters, obviously, but it's just what do I want to work on today that's going to set me up better for maybe five weeks from now, six weeks from now, rather than my next outing has to be perfect in order to do it."
As Smith himself acknowledged a moment before saying that, just last spring he was in a different boat of fighting to prove himself in every moment, so he's in no position to begrudge any young pitcher who's come into camp firing their best bolts. But in installing a new changeup, expanding his arsenal with multiple fastball shapes, and accepting the concept of prioritizing the way his body naturally moves in his delivery over chasing specific movement metrics (funny leg kick timing and all), Smith already represents so many pitching development touchstones the White Sox are preaching across their staff that they don't mind holding him up as a model.
"We push velo as much as we can, we've shortened pitcher duration basically as much as we can, and now what we can't change is just how a pitcher's body moves naturally in order to deliver that pitch, and there's still a ton of value in that that's not easily quantifiable," said Brian Bannister. "Pitchers talks amongst themselves. They're honestly, many of the times, the best recruiters to bring other pitchers in because they train in a facility in the offseason together, or they're friends, or they were teammates in the past. A lot of times when we're able to sign a player, it's because a current player had a really good experience with us, and they're actually our best promoter."
If him starting the season against the team that drafted him wasn't already representative of such, Smith looks like the beneficiary of the organization's unique belief in him. It both makes him willing to take up the mantle that the coaching staff has placed upon him, and an objectively compelling example to follow.
"Shane's done it," Martin said. "Guys look up to him and say, 'I want that, I want to do what he did this past year.' So when you have that and he's in here chopping it up with a guy who was in Double-A last year, and showing he cares about him as much as everyone else, you never know, at some point it might help us get to the places we're trying to go."
Determined to finish the season as strong as the hot start that made him an All-Star, Smith felt his last two starts of 2025 (11 IP, ER, 16 K) represented the best version of his game, the most mature approach, and misbehaving slider notwithstanding, the best version of his pitch mix. But by January, or really right when he started throwing again this offseason, Smith had a keen observation about it: It was gone. The feel for his pitches, the rhythm of his delivery, any sense of momentum he had from his five-day routine would have to be built up all over again.
It'd be fair to say he was the obvious choice for Opening Day starter based on last year, or extrapolating the pitching schedule from the first week of spring across the following month, Smith would probably prefer to think it was something he was competing for up until the moment he walked down the hall of the team complex into Venable's office on Sunday
"Last year was awesome in so many different ways, and it's still weird for me to say that I was an All-Star in 2025, but you have to live in your reality," Smith said. "There's expectations from maybe more people than me. I'm just trying to use last year as a springboard. You can't rest on your laurels, and you can't be like, 'I was an All-Star last year, I can coast into this year. It's a fresh slate."
That slate opens on March 26.
