Decades ago, sportswriter John Feinstein famously described golf as a good walk spoiled. In a similar spirit, Noah Schultz’s Saturday afternoon start against the Nationals could be best characterized as a good start spoiled.
Schultz tossed his first ever quality start, going six frames and striking out eight, but the White Sox got just two runners into scoring position while he was on the mound. The offense put together a two-run rally in the eighth inning to tie the game and spare Schultz the insult of being assigned the loss after pitching that well, but the Sox ultimately lost, 6-3, in ten innings.
The good news is that Schultz continues to look like the real deal. Through three starts, Schultz now has a 3.52 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and 18 strikeouts in 15 1/3 innings pitched.
“He’s been what we envisioned, with really good stuff, commanding the baseball well, making good in-game adjustments,” manager Will Venable said. “I really like the communication he’s had with the catchers in game. He really takes ownership over what he’s doing out there.”
In Saturday’s start against Washington, Schultz went six full innings, the two runs he surrendered coming on a two-out single in the fourth by Jacob Young. In the third inning, Schultz walked the leadoff batter and gave up a double to Keibert Ruiz before striking out James Wood and Curtis Mead and then finishing off the inning by getting Andres Chaparro to ground out to Colson Montgomery at shortstop.
The success in that spot Schultz chalked up primarily to Montgomery’s defense, but Venable pointed out Schultz’s ability to get back in the strike zone after drifting out of it against the first couple of batters. Schultz said he felt better with his slider as the game went on, which helped him work through jams like the third inning.
“A lot of it was an eyesight thing, just seeing where I’m starting to throw it instead of looking where I’m ending the throw,” Schultz said of his between-starts adjustments with the slider. “A lot of things that we worked on and sat down with [Edgar Quero] and [pitching coach Zach] Bove and the guys in my bullpen that we worked on.”
Schultz is also establishing his four-seam fastball in the big leagues, a pitch that was not necessarily his calling card as a prospect. Opposing hitters have a .067 batting average against it so far. Schultz credits some of his success with that pitch to the ability it grants to change the batters’ eye levels.
“I’m such an east-west pitcher that getting something that can go up, something that helps get guys’ eyes in different spots [helps],” Schultz said.
The trouble, of course, is when Schultz’s efforts are in vain. Venable praised his ability to work through tough spots, calling it “a big part of survival in being an effective pitcher.” Getting through a couple of tight spots helped him go six innings in just the third start of his major league career, but it can feel all for naught when the offense doesn’t pick up the slack on their end.
Going into Saturday’s game, the White Sox were in the bottom third in baseball in runs scored and just a few spots up from the very bottom in team batting average. There have been bright spots, sure, but so far the bad is too often outweighing the good.
Namely, at the catcher position. Coming the second game of this weekend’s series against the Nationals, White Sox catchers were batting just .153. Worst in baseball. In an effort to spark something, anything, they designated Reese McGuire for assignment and selected Drew Romo’s contract from Triple-A Charlotte on Saturday morning.
“We just haven’t gotten a lot of production out of the catching spot,” Venable said. “[Romo has] been doing a really good job offensively and defensively down there. Just want to see if we can get more production out of that spot — see if that tandem can do something to push Quero, to just get us more offense from that spot.”
In 17 games at Charlotte this season, Romo had a .298/.385/.561 slash line with three doubles and four home runs, so he seems like a decent candidate to boost the offense at least a little.
“I had a good offseason, worked on some stuff,” Romo said. “It’s carried over well into the season. Swing’s feeling good, I’m seeing the ball well and approach is locked in, too. So everything’s kind of clicking right now.”
Romo entered Saturday’s game late, taking over on defense after Luisangel Acuña pinch-ran for Quero in the seventh inning during the first of a couple of failed late-inning rallies. Acuña was ultimately stranded in the seventh by back-to-back strikeouts from Andrew Benintendi and Munetaka Murakami. Romo got to bat in the ninth and led off with a walk, jump-starting what could have been a walk-off rally. Instead, the White Sox went away empty-handed. That proved particularly costly when the Nationals put up four runs in the top of the tenth.
Moments like those can be seen as the growing pains of a team slowly making its way out of the mire of the past two seasons. Through the first month of the 2026 season, the White Sox have looked like a team that can at the very least avoid 100 losses without too much trouble. Finishing at .500 is probably a stretch, but they’re closer to that benchmark than they are setting records for the most losses in a season, like the White Sox did in 2024.
The offense is improving, albeit slowly at times, but they are a more talented group now than they were even at the beginning of this season. In the future, there will be more times when they come through to back up a strong pitching performance like Schultz had on Saturday.
“It’s been pretty good the last week or so,” Schultz said of the collective mood in the White Sox clubhouse. “It’s been great since I got here. Great guys, great team efforts that I’m really happy to be here and continue to try and get more wins going forward.”
Noah Schultz is just five years removed from taking his SAT, so he can be forgiven for having a bit of nerves during his major league debut on Tuesday night. Schultz pitched his high school innings at Oswego East, roughly 40 miles from Rate Field. He’s the first pitcher the White Sox have taken out of high school in over two decades. During his quick rise through the minor leagues, Schultz drew comparisons to pitching luminaries like Randy Johnson.
His debut was pumped up for days, the news of his impending arrival in Chicago first breaking over the weekend. Tuesday was, in many respects, “Noah Schultz Night,” complete with social media hype straight from the team. By the time Schultz took the mound, the wait for his first pitch had felt interminable.
Schultz started off with a called strike, met with loud cheers from the Sox faithful. From there, MLB Pipeline’s number two prospect in the White Sox system battled through a rocky first inning against the Rays. They ultimately tagged him for four runs — three earned, one run came on an errant throw to home by Schultz — but Schultz punctuated the inning with a commanding strikeout against Jonny DeLuca. A hopeful sign of things to come.
To his credit, Schultz responded later in his start, but the challenging first inning was a product of both some understandable nerves and not having his usual feel for his breaking pitch.
“I definitely didn’t have the slider tonight, so that was something I learned after the first inning,” Schultz said. “I just had to use the other pitches I have, and I’m happy to have those at my service whenever I need.”
Control was an issue in that first inning; at one point Schultz threw seven straight balls. And when he found the zone again, Ryan Vilade rewarded Schultz with a double to left field. What eventually helped Schultz get through the inning and from there through the rest of his outing, catcher Edgar Quero said, was figuring out how to work around his slider.
“It definitely buried a lot of the game plans against some of the hitters that the slider wasn’t there,” Schultz said. “But I think we did a good job talking between innings, gameplanning, switching things up after learning every time facing the guys.”
Quero said getting ahead of hitters and controlling the zone with Schultz’s cutter helped with his nerves and his confidence as the game went on, and later in his start, Schultz started to get a better feel for his four-seam fastball too.
Getting through the normal, major league debut nerves came in part from battling past the first inning, but Schultz said the support of his teammates went a long way as well.
“After the first inning, it was a lot easier to settle into stuff,” Schultz said. “A lot of nerves, you know, calm down a little bit. I can’t thank the guys in the dugout enough for helping me get through that. Helping me [by] saying they’ve had similar experiences.”
Schultz’s catcher was one of those guys. Quero made his own debut on April 17 of last year, so he still remembers well how that felt.
“It’s a different feeling,” Quero said. “It’s a lot of things coming through your mind and your feelings. But I’m happy to have him right here, right now.”
Schultz logged a three up, three down second inning on just 11 pitches. Tampa Bay scored one more run in the third on back-to-back base hits, but even that damage was limited because Schultz made up for his first inning throwing gaffe by deftly throwing out Junior Caminero at third base during an attempted double steal.
Schultz pitched a mostly clean fourth and then finished his night by striking out Jonathan Aranda looking in the top of the fifth. After the first inning, Schultz allowed two base hits and two walks and notched three of his four strikeouts. In all, a respectable outing with plenty of reason for White Sox fans to feel good about Schultz’s future.
“I thought it was overall really good,” manager Will Venable said. “Understandably, the first inning sped up on him a little bit there, [and Schultz] wasn’t in the zone like we saw him later in the game. But he did a nice job settling down and good us to a good spot and gave us a chance to stay in the ballgame.”
Schultz’s next turn in the rotation will likely come in a week, when the White Sox are in Arizona. That’s an environment where it should be a lot easier to avoid pregame jitters, both because it’s on the road and because his home stadium is a short drive from where he pitched in high school.
In his reflection on Tuesday’s outing against the Rays, Schultz stressed his eagerness to get to work in the days between his debut and his next start. Based on his debut, just having a better feel for his breaking pitch in his next start will improve things significantly for Schultz. Pitchers can lose feel for a pitch during an outing without that being a sign of a larger problem, and it’s probably the case that this was just an off night for Schultz with his slider.
The fact that Schultz went through adjusting his game plan on the fly against major league hitters bodes well for his future. That’s a valuable and crucial learning experience for any young pitcher, and it’s often one that, if they fail, it can make a brutal introduction to the majors.
As for what his long-term trajectory might entail, Schultz has a very high ceiling, and the next few weeks will do a lot for continuing to push him closer to it. As the Sox are sorting through other areas of the ballclub in their effort to put together a season that is a clear step forward from last year, Schultz is a pitcher who can not only stabilize the rotation, but one day lead it.
“The sky‘s the limit for him, man,” Quero said. “There’s not many guys like him right now in the big leagues.”
