Despite a couple homers, Shane Smith is back on track.
The rookie right-hander’s sensational start to the season preceded a rough stretch of short outings straddling his All-Star -appearance. He posted a 9.93 ERA across six starts and failed to finish five innings in any of them.
But in his last five turns through the White Sox’ rotation, things have gone much better, a mighty positive sign for someone who has worked his way to the front of the conversation about the team’s pitching future.
Smith followed up seven innings of one-hit, no-run ball against the Royals with 6⅓ innings of three-hit, two-run ball against the Yankees on Saturday, though both runs came on solo homers in the Sox’ 5-3 defeat.
“He did a phenomenal job,” catcher Kyle Teel said. “His fastball looked electric, and he was making pitches. Really great job by him.
“He’s a power pitcher, you know? He’s starting to learn himself. . . . That’s just development, and he’s doing great.”
Indeed, Smith looked far more like the pitcher who was so effective over the first 2½ months of the season, when he posted a 2.37 ERA through his first 13 starts.
He has a 2.45 ERA over his last five outings, once again standing out as a surprise building block for the rebuilding Sox.
“He’s got a lot of different ways that he can beat you, different pitches that he can use in different ways,” manager Will Venable said Saturday. “As different lineups respond to him differently, he’s got to reinvent ways to get outs.
“I remember reflecting on a start where he had done well, and it was his changeup that was really good. And the next start, it was the curveball. And then the fastball.
“He’s done a nice job of just figuring out different ways, and that’s why he’s been able to be as successful as he has been.”
Smith struggled for a bit, with pitching coach Ethan Katz pointing to a blow-up start against the Cardinals in late June that took a while for Smith to recover from.
But he has made it through that challenging stretch and emerged to again work through opposing lineups as the Sox’ season winds down and plans start to come into focus for 2026 and beyond.
“If anybody’s going to beat me, it’s going to be me,” Smith said after Saturday’s game. “It’s kind of how I was in that rough stretch, I was beating myself a little bit with not staying aggressive and not throwing pitches in the zone and not attacking hitters.
“I learned a whole bunch of stuff from that, but it’s just realizing my stuff is good enough.”
“It’s been really good to see what he’s been able to do and how he’s responded since coming back [from the injured list in early August],” Katz said last weekend. “For a young guy to have a tough game up here can really do some work to them upstairs.
“You’re going to have bad games. You’re going to go through some tough stretches. You’re going to have some days when you’re just off mechanically. But trying to navigate and trying to keep the team in it is going to be very important.
“[We want to] show him like, ‘This is how good your stuff is. This is what you’re doing. Don’t let this one little thing kind of be a blip on the radar to where now you’re starting to lose your confidence or think that you don’t have the same arsenal or something’s not the same. Just stay the course and keep attacking guys.’ ”
Extra-inning defeat
Sox pitchers held the Yankees to just three hits through the first 10 innings -Saturday night, but outfielder Cody Bellinger’s bloop single brought the go-ahead run home against lefty reliever Tyler Alexander in the 11th.
After that, Alexander allowed a couple RBI doubles, and the Sox fell 5-3 in extras, the second consecutive night they outhit the Yankees but still lost.