Will Venable has praised his ballclub for bringing consistent energy and focus even amid the many low points and crushing losses of the 2025 season. And sure, he would know better than any of us.
As far as the on-field work product goes, the Sox have been peppering in a healthy share of lifeless thrashings of late. They've now scored two runs or fewer in half of their last 10 games.
Time will tell if Shane Smith winds up being more important to the White Sox's long-term success than Jonathan Cannon, Sean Burke, or even Davis Martin. But with the new Sox front office cleverly plucking him from the Milwaukee Brewers--an org they aspire to emulate--Smith has existed as a talisman, a little reminder that the new leadership group is capable of making good decisions, even while delivering another year of bad baseball.
As such, it stung a little extra to see Smith's fastball getting torched around the yard by a potent Diamondbacks offense. Old foe Josh Naylor turned and burned on 98 mph at his kneecaps for a two-run double in the first. And the opening frame felt positively serene compared to Smith walking a pair to set up a grooved heater to Pavin Smith (hopefully no relation) for a three-run bomb in the second, which effectively ended the competitive portion of the evening.
"I felt better this week than last week," Smith said of utilizing his extra rest. "It didn't feel as long. I think I paced stuff out better during the week. But yeah, I think I have made an adjustment there, but obviously didn't translate."
Smith opened the month of June with 11 1/3 innings of one-run ball and is holding his velocity, so viewing his season a straight downward trend as he approaches his 94 1/3 inning workload from last year is probably excising some nuance from the conversation. But since the Sox haven't had Smith start on regular rest in over a month, their handling of him will only grow more cautious of him after back-to-back clunkers, and they pulled him after two innings, despite having a bullpen game scheduled for Tuesday. Will Venable cited two 30+-pitch innings as the precipitating factor.
"He's in a good spot physically, mentally," said Venable, who shot down the idea of skipping Smith's next turn in the rotation. "We're taking this one rotation cycle at a time to figure out the best thing to manage workload, and do the best we can to keep these guys in good spots. Right now, that's not something we're discussing."
As for the Sox offense, well, the league has verified that they took all of their at-bats required for this game to count. Beleaguered all year and entering the game with an ERA just shy of 6.00, Diamondbacks starter Eduardo Rodriguez used a generous zone (more on that later) to rack up 10 strikeouts over six scoreless innings, none of which got spicy enough to constitute a scoring threat.
Edgar Quero led off the second inning by doubling down the left field line, only for Rodriguez to counter by striking out the side, getting Lenyn Sosa and Kyle Teel for two of his six strikeouts looking. Teel led off the fifth with an automatic double that hopped over the left field wall, and was followed by Vinny Capra's flare wriggling out of Randal Grichuk's glove at the end of his sliding effort in right, meaning that the only Sox hit with a runner in scoring position on the night failed to advance the runner. Not to mention it was followed by Chase Meidroth grounding into an inning-ending double play.
"Our approach with Rodriguez, we were going to have to take some tough pitches and control the zone, with the good changeup and the slider, cutter," Venable said. "But we were going to have to be ready for the fastball in the zone. I thought we did an OK job controlling the zone, but he just beat us all day with fastballs in the zone."
Despite the White Sox having a promotional night inspired by the Barbie movie, they did not seem closer to fine.
Bullet points:
*Vinny Capra pitched the ninth and got knocked around, but Miguel Vargas booted Randal Grichuk's hard grounder to third for an error, so both runs were unearned. Capra ended the ninth by striking out Ketel Marte, who already had three hits on the night and may have been doing a bit and/or considering his dinner plans.
*Home plate umpire Ron Kulpa rang up Vargas and Quero back-to-back in the bottom of the sixth on letter-high pitches. Both provided some measure of feedback, but Quero's criticism was viewed to be less than constructive and he was ejected. The inning ended with Sosa--usually the canary in the coal mine for whether a pitch is truly out of the zone--getting rung up for a pitch in the same spot.
"I check here inside after and it was a tough strike," Quero conceded, explaining his objections stemmed from his feeling that a lot of calls have gone against him recently. "It’s not in the middle but it was touching the line. It was a pretty good pitch.
*Wikelman González made his second career outing and it was an inversion of his first. He was greeted with hard contact and needed incompetent baserunning to escape his first inning with only one run allowed, before finding the ears on his breaking stuff and striking out the side in the second.
*Two innings marks the shortest start of Smith's big league career, and five earned runs matches his career-high for a single game.
*Already missing Corbin Carroll, the D-Backs had both Naylor and Eugenio Suárez (hit by a wild Smith fastball in the first) depart with injuries. It was a pyrrhic blowout for Arizona.
*Jordan Leasure is the opener for Tuesday.
