The White Sox’s minor league pitching depth has disappeared

Before we delve into the way the White Sox's pitching depth has utterly evaporated this season, have you ever noticed how the launch of a starting pitcher's major league career is so reliant on timing? There isn't another job in sports whose make-or-break moment depends so much on multiple tumblers clicking into place, as the turns of two rotations have to line up in order for a promotion to be put a position to succeed.

Both baseball and the 26-man roster are zero-sum games, so you end up with winners and losers. Sometimes this works out for the better, like Jake Palisch having more MLB appearances (one) than Triple-A appearances (zero) because he happened to be posting a sub-2.00 ERA for Birmingham just as the White Sox pitching staff reached a crisis point last June.

And sometimes it works out for the worse, like a rainout removing the White Sox's immediate need for Hagen Smith, who then struggles in his next scheduled start for Charlotte before being placed on the injured list for a left shoulder impingement. He'll probably get multiple other opportunities to crack the White Sox rotation, but right now he's out for a month-plus, and good fortune is never guaranteed beyond that.

Smith's injury is the latest blow for a White Sox team whose preseason weakness (offense) is now its leading attribute, and whose preseason strength (pitching options) is now its greatest liability.

They entered 2026 with enough high-octane high-minors arms to dream of an entirely new rotation by the end of the season -- Noah Schultz, Hagen Smith, Tanner McDougal, David Sandlin, maaaaaaaybe Christian Oppor -- to go along with a couple pitchers (Jonathan Cannon, Duncan Davitt) who looked primed for sixth-starting opportunities earlier.

Instead, all seven options have struggled to make themselves available. In order from best to worst:

*Schultz aced his Triple-A assignment to open the season, but struggled to throw strikes in Chicago until right knee patellar tendinitis was once again revealed to be the culprit.

*Sandlin made White Sox history in his major league debut, which was a shock considering multiple injuries delayed his start to the season, and he hadn't completed his minor league ramp-up when the majors came calling. The next two outings knocked him back to earth, and now he's back in Charlotte, hopefully getting an earnest shot at establishing normalcy.

*Davitt benefited from one of those spur-of-the-moment emergency call-ups and threw a scoreless inning, but he has a 7.36 ERA in Charlotte, where he's bounced in and out of the rotation.

*Cannon didn't retire a batter in his only MLB appearance this season back in April due to a hip issue, and he's straight-up not having a good time in Charlotte (6.46 ERA overall, 8.37 ERA at home).

*McDougal suffered a flexor strain in his right elbow, after he said he overcompensated in his delivery after a minor hamstring tweak in his prior start, and won't be available until the All-Star break at the earliest.

*Oppor lost the ability to throw strikes with any of his pitches, and while he was taken out of the Birmingham rotation and sent to Arizona, the reduced stress hasn't resulted in increased control (6.1 IP, 2 H, 9 R, 9 ER, 16 BB, 12 K, 4 HBP, 8 WP).

That leaves Smith, whose situation isn't the most dire, but whose injury looks like a sort of canary in this Brian Bannister-directed coal mine, as he developed the shoulder issue not long after working to raise his arm slot in his quest to stop walking guys. It's the sort of development that makes you notice that the number of White Sox making smooth-enough recoveries from Tommy John surgery (Mason Adams, Juan Carela) are outnumbered by the ones who aren't currently pitching (Ky Bush, Prelander Berroa, Drew Thorpe, Blake Larson), and wonder if there's a greater theme. He's not even the organization's first Smith whose shoulder started barking amid battles with mechanics this season, as Shane Smith has been out with a rotator cuff issue since early May.

It's easy to start pulling alarms when the lack of productivity is so prevalent. In 2025, the White Sox had 10 minor league pitchers throw at least 90 innings, and 11 if you count Davitt, who ended up topping 150 for the season when including his work in the Tampa Bay organization. Not only that, but all of those pitchers had useful seasons, whether they boosted their own prospect stock, or merely filled a rotation spot and gave their coaches one less thing to worry about.

This time around, the guys who are logging innings at the affiliates are either old for the level, or they're spinning their wheels.

Perhaps some of these pitchers are suffering from the livelier ball that is inflating offenses across most of the leagues below Triple-A, but you could just as easily argue that deader baseballs last year helped produce an illusion of pitching depth that wasn't actually there. Gabe Davis is a new positive development story this season, but he doesn't have much company, and he's limited to four innings an appearance.

However it's happened, it's something the White Sox are going to have to address, first at the trade deadline, and then beyond it -- or hell, maybe even before it, given that the White Sox are picking first overall in the upcoming draft on July 11. Of course, you never draft for need, none of the rankings have UC Santa Barbara righty Jackson Flora on the same tier as the three position players vying for top prospect status, and Chris Getz has stated multiple times that he's taking a hitter.

But Getz also said this season wasn't about 2026 until it became about 2026, so he's shown an ability to adjust to shifting circumstances. Multiple tumblers have to align here, too, but whether Flora is compelling enough to merit consideration is the shakier one, because there's suddenly all sorts of room to accommodate him.