The White Sox reach the halfway point of the 2025 season on Wednesday, but Shane Smith and Mike Vasil have already fulfilled their full-season obligations.
Today is the 90th day of the MLB season, which means that Smith and Vasil have met the minimum requirements for active duty for a Rule 5 pick. They still can't be optioned to the minors without being offered back to their original teams, but they can now be placed on the injured list, whether it's for an actual injury or abundance-of-caution workload management purposes, without concerns of coming up short at the end of the season. After the year is up, they'll be regular members of the White Sox's 40-man roster with a full slate of options remaining.
Smith stumbled to this particular line with his two ugly innings against Arizona on Monday night, as he's delivered consecutive duds for the first time in his brief career. Still, even when accounting for the present uncertainty about whether Smith is dealing with randomness, regression and/or hitting a physical wall, it's remarkable that it took this long to start having that conversation about either pitcher, because carrying two Rule 5 picks doubled their chances for immediate disappointment.
When the White Sox took Smith with the first pick in the Rule 5 draft in the winter meetings, it made all the sense in the world to add a decent righty with a recent record of performance and unexplored potential. The Sox had multiple bullpen spots to choose from, along with a need to add to their emergency starter depth chart, so even if Smith didn't assimilate smoothly, he'd have various avenues for finding a niche. Claiming Vasil at the end of spring training, and then Gage Workman a week into the season to add two more Rule 5 picks to the mix, however, ran the risk of tying their hands too tight.
While Workman didn't work out, there hasn't been any harm in having two spots on the pitching staff held down by players without options. In fact, they've helped a great deal. Even after a very rough Monday night, Smith still looks like the front-runner for being the White Sox's All-Star representative, and Vasil has been a perfectly cromulent swingman, ranging from three starts to one save.
"I've now officially pitched innings one through nine on the season," said Vasil, who has absorbed his transient season with joyful fascination. "Every inning in different roles brings different things, a different mindset. I can definitely say closing a game is a lot different from starting. To be able to get that experience in all those roles too, is very, very cool."
Now, when you go to the 2025 White Sox Baseball-Reference.com team page, you'll see the faces of Smith and Vasil side by side, tied for third.
For all the things that have gone wrong for the White Sox this season, it's incredible that this isn't one of them, because even when a Rule 5 pick manages to last a full season without being returned, it usually requires a mix of toil and math.
Using Dylan Covey's 2017 season as a local example, the White Sox opened the season with him in the rotation, where he endured an 8.12 ERA through eight starts that only covered 53 days of the MLB season. The White Sox then placed him on the injured list with a strained oblique, then waited until Aug. 15 to reinstate him, when there were 48 days remaining in the season. And really, they only had to wait out the remainder of August, because there were no restrictions on the number of players the White Sox could add from their 40-man roster in September.
To compare their bodies of work, you can add up Smith and Vasil's ERAs and still be a run and a half short of Covey's.
| Player | Season | G | IP | BB | K | ERA | bWAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Covey | 2017 | 18 | 70 | 34 | 41 | 7.71 | -1.3 |
| Smith | 2025 | 14 | 74.2 | 32 | 68 | 3.38 | 1.2 |
| Vasil | 2025 | 21 | 49 | 27 | 38 | 2.94 | 1.2 |
It should be more difficult than Smith and Vasil have made it look, to the point that most conversations about Rule 5 picks involve wondering if the extra effort is worth it.
At least on the team's part. Covey went 6-29 with a 6.54 ERA through the White Sox's rebuilding years, so the organization never received a payoff, but Covey has since made MLB appearances for three other organizations, and he's still a pitcher who can find gainful Triple-A employment (he's currently in Gwinnett). Undecorated as it may be, Rule 5 picks like Nick Avila and Shane Drohan, whom the White Sox selected in the previous two seasons but returned before ever rostering, would probably prefer his career to theirs. It's an even tougher road to travel on the position-player side because they can't be limited to one-inning, low-leverage appearances. Ryan Noda counts as a major Rule 5 success for producing a full, average season with Oakland in 2023, and now here he is in Chicago, batting .105.
I suppose that reminds us how fleeting success can be for players whose Rule 5 status label them as fringe talents until proven otherwise, but one person's caveat is another's reminder to savor an unlikely outcome, because the odds were against even a temporary triumph at this stage. Moreover, knocking out the first 90 days without incident makes the next 97 days easier to navigate. Will Venable said skipping Smith's next start was "not something we're discussing" right now, but it's something they could discuss if need be.
Basically, the 90-day mark just provides a little extra forgiveness that wasn't guaranteed at the start of the season. Smith and Vasil still have too much to prove to take anything for granted, but they won't be as pressured to prove it under restrictive conditions. And should they regress to the land of up-and-down depth from which they came despite their best efforts, the White Sox will be happy to have more options with options.
