White Sox top pick set for Minor League debut

This story was excerpted from Scott Merkin’s White Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

CHICAGO -- Hagen Smith’s first official professional pitch will be thrown Saturday night, as the No. 5 selection in the 2024 Draft makes his White Sox debut for High-A Winston-Salem at Aberdeen.

Yet, the 21-year-old southpaw already ranks as the No. 3 White Sox prospect and No. 32 prospect overall, per MLB Pipeline. Smith sits behind Noah Schultz, the White Sox top prospect and No. 15 overall, as the Top 2 left-handed pitching prospects in all of baseball.

“They are a different kind of talent,” White Sox director of player development Paul Janish told MLB.com of Schultz and Smith. “That’s all there is to it.”

Smith had separate outings of two innings and three innings during recent bridge camp appearances in Arizona after agreeing upon a franchise-record $8 million bonus. It also was a Draft record for left-handed pitchers, breaking Brendan McKay’s bonus of $7,005,000.

After throwing 84 innings this season for Arkansas, during which he struck out 161 against 34 walks, Smith is set to make three three-inning Saturday starts with the Dash, getting him close to 100 innings overall in 2024. These upcoming outings will be more pitch-count based than innings-directed, per Janish.

“We’ll be as versatile/adaptable as we need to be with him,” Janish said. “We felt it was important to get him to an affiliate. It’s not so much a big deal where he is, but it’s more being in that schedule and that environment and understand what that looks like on a day-to-day basis.”

“You are on bus trips,” White Sox pitching coordinator Matt Zaleski told MLB.com. “You are getting used to the professional atmosphere of working out in the afternoon, going about your daily business, compared to Arizona, where you are doing it all in the morning. It’s just a good taste more than the quality of baseball. He should have no issue with that with his talent level.”

Zaleski watched Smith throw a bullpen session during Draft camp, and said he was as good as advertised.

“You get an arsenal similar to [Carlos] Rodón’s, but very mobile with the lower half similar to [Chris] Sale,” said Zaleski of Smith. “Not necessarily across his body and what not. He is very mobile for as thick as he’s put together.”

So, Smith has comparisons to Sale and Rodón, two supremely talented southpaws who pitched for the White Sox, and he’s a Top 40 prospect despite not yet pitching with an affiliate. No pressure there, right?

Janish doesn’t believe lofty expectations will be a roadblock for Smith.

“He was a Friday-night guy at Arkansas. That was a big deal at that point in his career. He did very well with that,” Janish said. “He’ll endure the expectations very well.

“He’s not the kind of guy that spends a bunch of time mixed up in what everybody else is saying. He’s a pretty motivated individual to have success. He has his own internal goals. He's hyper-focused on taking care of what he needs to take care of, and the rest will take care of itself.”

Many pundits thought the White Sox would aim for hitting with the No. 5 pick, with a strong base of pitching being developed within the 11th-ranked system. But Smith was considered the top pitcher in the Draft by the organization, a hurler with a potential 2025 big league arrival along with Schultz.

His work continues Saturday near the end of Winston-Salem’s season. But it’s only the start of what the White Sox believe will be a frontline career.

“One of the more impressive things for me was the way he interacted with the catcher during the bullpen and the other guys in general over the course of a couple of weeks out here,” Janish said. “Those are the kind of things for me that lend itself towards him being the type of guy you want to represent the organization which, obviously we all agree, he’s a big part of the future.

“That’s what really stuck out to me, in addition to the left-handed arm talent. … He’s really impressive. He’s supremely talented. With him, it’s not an issue of ability. It’s going to be an issue of long-term health and that kind of thing.”