White Sox to rest Hagen Smith, manage other top prospect loads

CINCINNATI -- Josh Barfield made it clear Tuesday that the White Sox are not about to take any shortcuts with their top prospects.

The assistant general manager explained before the three-game series opener at Great American Ball Park why they are pulling back on the workload on pitchers Hagen Smith and Grant Taylor.

The club made some slight adjustments with a trio of its top prospects on Tuesday, prior to the Major League team opening a three-game series in Cincinnati.

Hagen Smith -- the No. 3 White Sox prospect and No. 30 overall, per MLB Pipeline -- will have his next start skipped with Double-A Birmingham. Smith's velocity was fluctuating in his last start on Saturday at Columbus, showing some signs of fatigue.

There was a long rain delay, leading to a first pitch of 9:02 p.m. ET, and Smith, 21, was limited to two hitless innings over just 41 pitches with four strikeouts and two walks. The start was shortened as a precautionary measure, and the skipped start is to help navigate his first full season, where he has a 2.10 ERA in 25 2/3 innings over seven starts to go with 42 strikeouts against 20 walks and 11 hits allowed.

“It's about feel, right? I think in some ways, we went through it last year with [Garrett] Crochet in the big leagues, and trying to navigate not having a ton of workload,” Barfield said. “Hagen is in his first full year. ... He only threw [91 2/3 innings combined between college and the Minors] last year, so we want to make sure we're managing that workload. And it won't be just him. We have a lot of young arms. We got a lot of young talent in the Minor Leagues. We'll make sure that we build in some rest for them.”

Medically, Smith is in a good spot, according to the White Sox. They want to be proactive in managing his workload, so they will likely do this from time to time throughout the 2025 season for Smith and others.

Grant Taylor, the No. 7 White Sox prospect, is going to make some appearances out of Birmingham's bullpen. The move helps manage the right-hander’s workload, while getting him some bullpen reps.

Taylor, who turns 23 on May 20, was a second-round pick in the 2023 Draft. He was highly impressive during Spring Training, striking out six Dodgers over two innings in the last of three appearances, and could finish his season with the White Sox as part of his set innings workload. Taylor has a 1.56 ERA in 17 1/3 innings over six starts for the Barons, with 19 strikeouts, 10 walks and nine hits allowed.

Barfield left open the possibility of both a promotion to the Majors this season and moving into the rotation at some point in the future.

“There is a definite possibility that at some point he comes up here, and likely, especially early on, that could be as a reliever,” Barfield said. “You see a lot of guys as they break in, that role is as a reliever, and then it can grow into more and grow into a starter.

“But with that, it's managing the workload. Between the injuries in college and last year, he's missed a lot of time. So, knowing that, he's not going to be able to go out there and throw 130, 140 innings this year. So we want to make sure we manage those innings, and you'll save enough so if the opportunity comes up, maybe later on in the year for him to come up.”

The long road also applies to a position player who is trying to retool his approach at the plate.

Shortstop Colson Montgomery, 23, returned to Triple-A Charlotte on Tuesday from the Rookie-level ACL White Sox and was in the Knights’ starting lineup at Gwinnett.

Montgomery, who recently dropped out of MLB Pipeline’s Top 100, went 2-for-5 with an RBI in Charlotte’s 8-5 win over Gwinnett. He is the No. 6 White Sox prospect and battled through a rough enough stretch at the plate for Charlotte (.149/.223/.479 slash line in 103 plate appearances) to where the White Sox sent him to Arizona on April 30 to work on his approach and get away from the daily results-based grind.

What impressed Barfield the most was how Montgomery handled the assignment to the ACL White Sox, looking at it as a chance to build his mechanics and not a demotion.

“I think that's always like the hardest part, right? And you try and be delicate with it because a lot of us, like him, are former players,” Barfield said. “You've been in situations like that. It feels like you're never going to be able to get it back. And there's that initial disappointment of getting pulled out because he's a competitor. To his credit, he went down there with a great mentality and he really, really got after it. And I think knowing the goal was to put him on a faster trajectory, to get back to where we all know he can be, and eventually back up here. I think he went into it with the right mindset, and he got a lot out of it.”