White Sox Shut Down Top Pitching Prospect Noah Schultz

Schultz, 22, earned a promotion to Triple-A Charlotte after a promising start to his 2025 campaign. Across 12 starts with Double-A Birmingham, he recorded a 3.34 ERA and a 1.58 WHIP with 58 strikeouts and 36 walks.

But after making a jump to Triple-A, Schultz struggled against tougher competition while working on several adjustments with his pitch grips, mechanics and overall arsenal. He gave up 15 earned runs in 11.1 innings across his first three starts with the Knights. He also allowed four runs in 0.2 innings in the 2025 MLB All-Star Futures game in Atlanta.

This knee injury then affected a good portion of Schultz's third professional season. He was placed on the injured list on July 20 and missed just over a month, only to return to the injured list on Sept. 4.

Janish thinks it could be valuable down the road for Schultz to handle these ups and downs.

"Noah again showed us some willingness to deal with adversity, some grit, some want to to push through maybe some discomfort at times," Janish said. "The context is significant long term for when the time comes when he’s going to have to deal with that at the Major League level hopefully."

Schultz was initially slated to continue his season in the Arizona Fall League, but that's no longer the case. He and the White Sox now look ahead to 2026 Spring Training. In addition to the adjustments Schultz made this season, Janish believes the 6-foot-10, 240-pound lefty can help himself by becoming more physically robust through weight training.

As for Schultz's workload next season, Janish didn't target a specific number of innings for a few reasons.

"He’ll tell us that, right? Similar to what we dealt with with Garrett [Crochet] at the Major League level last year. Based on some sports science testing we do, we can play it by ear," Janish said. "We can see where he’s at coming into Spring Training from a physical standpoint and we can track his outings. Obviously we are, relative to Noah specifically, we are going to be paying pretty close attention. Health is going to be a primary concern. We’ll move through next season as his body and his output will allow."

"I wouldn’t put any parameters at this point for sure knowing Noah and the makeup and knowing what he’s going to do this offseason, I would be very surprised if he’s not in really good shape coming into Spring Training. From an innings standpoint, as opposed to putting parameters on what it might be, we’ll look at it as an opportunistic opportunity to try to push him as much as his body shows he will allow."