Left-hander Hagen Smith earned his first major-league victory in his first major-league appearance in the oddest of ways.
The Guardians and White Sox played the first inning of their series finale Sunday at Rate Field before the heavens unexpectedly opened. Major League Baseball and the Sox saw forecasts that called for clear skies, despite heavy rain to the north. After another rough first inning for right-hander Davis Martin, his day was done.
With four lefties and four switch hitters in the Guardians’ lineup, Sox manager Will Venable chose Smith to take the ball after the rain delay, which lasted 2 hours and 23 minutes.
“I didn’t know I was going in till about an hour into the delay,” Smith said. “I was like, ‘Sounds good to me.’ ”
And it looked good to the Sox. Smith struck out the side in the second inning before walking the bases loaded in the third and escaping. When the Sox scored four runs in their third, on the strength of Colson Montgomery’s three-run homer, Smith was in line for the win.
He got it when the Sox held on for a 5-3 victory, taking the series and extending their lead in the American League Central to a season-high 3 ½ games, only now it’s over the Tigers, who are a half-game ahead of the Twins and Guardians. The Sox visit the Tigers next weekend.
The victory also gave the Sox 61 wins, one more than they had all of last season.
“It’s great. It signals progress for us,” manager Will Venable said. “Obviously, we have a long way to go here, but certainly happy about where we’re at now, knowing that we’ve gone through some stuff and continue to push through and just get better and better.”
The Sox called up Smith, along with right-hander Tanner McDougal, on Saturday. Smith, the Sox’ No. 2 prospect and 51st-ranked prospect overall, according to MLB.com, struck out 87 hitters in 58 ⅓ innings at Triple-A Charlotte this season, allowing only a .189 batting average. But he also walked 40. On Sunday, he struck out three and walked four.
“He’s got such good stuff,” Venable said. “If he’s in the zone, he’s going to be really hard to deal with. We saw that, and you understand with that stuff, it’s hard to control the movement, that there are going to be some walks in there. But as he continues to grow, you expect him to be able to tighten it up.”
“The first inning obviously was good, and then the second inning fell off a little bit,” Smith said. “You just want to go out there and compete, and the results are what they are. And it turned out to be good.”
The Sox drafted Smith fifth overall out of Arkansas in 2024. He rose through the organization each season before getting the call.
“You always dream of this growing up, especially when you get drafted,” he said. “You just look forward to the debut. It was a really special moment.”
“You have these plans to get these young guys a nice soft landing spot,” Venable said, “and the second inning after a rain delay is not something he’s done before. And then as his outing unfolded, he was challenged in his second inning with the bases loaded. It was a really good test for him and obviously came through.”
McDougal almost had his special moment, too. With righty Trevor Richards, the Sox’ seventh pitcher of the game, struggling in the ninth, Venable had McDougal warming up. Richards walked No. 9 hitter Angel Genao to start the inning, then walked Chase DeLauter one out later, bringing up Jose Ramirez as the tying run.
Ramirez hit a sacrifice fly, and Rhys Hoskins flew out to end it, giving Richards his first save of the season and third of his career — and Smith his first victory.
“I didn’t know that until I got back in the clubhouse,” Smith said.