After a bumpy 2025, it looked like prized White Sox lefty Noah Schultz had righted the ship to begin this year. Schultz merited a callup to Chicago in mid-April, rocking a sterling 2.35 ERA and 2.97 xERA through 23 Triple-A innings. Yet things have gone unfortunately – and unexpectedly – south from there.
Ranked as high as #16 on MLB Pipeline’s rankings before last season, the lanky youngster then battled injuries on his way to a 73 IP / 4.38 ERA in 2025. Schultz was consistently working on his off-speed offerings, so even disregarding injuries, those stats were misleading.
It then seemed like all was healthy and well to start 2026, but the southpaw has been nothing short of disastrous on the White Sox. Prior to Sunday’s start, Schultz had a 6.00 ERA, 6.07 xERA, 5.35 FIP, 1.42 WHIP, 8.06 K/9, and 5.44 BB/9.
So I did what any good baseball nerd would do, and I dove into the advanced metrics. The good news? Schultz’s struggles are, for the most part, diagnosable. Poor command is obvious, but even past that, it’s easy to see where he’s going astray. The bad news? I have no insight into whether these things can be fixed. For now, though, all we can do is analyze (and hope and pray).
Editor’s Note: The statistics and graphics in the next two sections reflect Schultz’s numbers before Sunday’s start against Oakland.
Pitch Usage
To evaluate Schultz’s pitches, I’ll mainly be using xwOBA to keep things simple. For those unaware, wOBA is basically just a fancy version of OPS, so xwOBA is just the expected wOBA based on launch angle and exit velocity. It’s a solid approximation of a hitter or pitcher’s overall performance that accounts for luck, essentially.
Let’s begin with how Schultz attacks right-handers: 26.1% four-seam, 22.4% sinker, 21.0% sweeper, 19.0% cutter, 11.5% changeup. This is a pretty normal arsenal for left vs. right. However, these usages don’t make sense when you consider the capability of each pitch.
Mainly, Schultz is throwing way too many of his worst pitches—the sinker and sweeper. The league median xwOBA is .321, and 43.4% of Schultz’s offerings to righties are at .449 (sinker) and .411 (mark). Why is the sinker so bad? Well:
This is NOT where sinkers are supposed to be located. I repeat, this is NOT what a sinker pitch location graph should look like. This pitch needs to be primarily down in the zone, and it’s not getting there, so righties are taking advantage.
The good news is Noah’s four-seamer is effective! He’s yielding just a .311 xwOBA on it while getting whiffs 20.5% of the time. I’m not a pitching expert by any means, but increasing four-seamer and decreasing sinker usage seems like a no-brainer.
Regarding the off-speed and breaking stuff, it’s a similar story. Schultz can get his sweeper down-and-in to righties a good chunk of the time, but when he misses just a little bit back over the plate, they get pummeled. We can then compare the changeup to his four-seamer in the sense that it appears to be underused as well.
Thrown roughly half the frequency as the sweeper, his change-piece yields just a .299 xwOBA against to go with a sparkling 36.8 Whiff%. That’s because Schultz is adept at keeping it down-and-away:
In summary, outside of the obvious command issues, he’s leaning on the wrong pitches against righties. When we take a look at his approach vs lefties, I come to the same conclusion.
The Naperville native appears to be much more effective against lefties, which is typical. Schultz sits at a 1.10 WHIP left-left in contrast to his 1.55 WHIP vs right-handers. Unfortunately, this is extremely misleading. If you’d believe it, he’s actually been incredibly lucky, as lefties have run into a bunch of hard-hit outs that account for a .293 wOBA vs .403 (!!) expected wOBA.
Clearly, there are struggles here to uncover. Let’s start with the pitch mix again, which is unsurprisingly different for left-left: 36.7% sinker, 26.6% sweeper, 22.5% cutter, 14.2% four-seamer. Surely, with this sinker-sweeper dominance, they must be better offerings than against righties, correct? Well, no.
While the sinker isn’t getting hit very hard (.290 xSLG), Schultz struggles to locate it against lefties (41.9 Zone%), which leads to walks and pushes the xwOBA up to .383. I sound like a broken record here, but why not throw the four-seamer more?? The sample size is extremely small with just 24 pitches, but he locates it a bit better and has yet to surrender a hit on it in 6 PAs, good for a .239 xwOBA.
Meanwhile, there are few words to describe how terrible the sweeper has been against lefties. This would typically be a southpaw’s best offering against left-handed hitters, but Schultz’s are getting tagged for a .969 xSLG and .602 xwOBA. Good grief! You probably know what’s coming next now—the location graph.
Unfortunately, the 22-year-old has no idea where this pitch is going against lefties. There’s nothing wrong with a backdoor sweeper, but generally you would hope to see it slide away or below the zone, and neither of those is happening.
Release Point
Once more, I’m not a pitching guru. But I do know enough to know that a constant release point is crucial for locating effectively and keeping hitters off-balance.
Much has been made of Schultz’s release point and extension being shockingly low for such a tall fellow, but asking to change that at this point is suspect. The funky sidearm angle is second nature to him and part of what may actually promote deception.
Wherever the release point is, though, it needs to be consistent across pitches. Right now, it’s anything but. Let’s start with a baseline release point graph for a couple of successful left-handed pitchers, courtesy of Baseball Savant.
Suarez and Skubal are different pitchers, but we can see here how they have success. Suarez generally has a very tight range of release points, and any difference in pitches (different-colored dots) are minuscule. Skubal has a very tight range for his off-speed pitches, and even though his fastball is released from a noticeably different spot, he can get away with it because of the intense 96-99mph velocity.
Here’s what Noah Schultz’s graph looks like:
Scroll up and you can hopefully tell right away how much wider it is than Suarez’s, but let’s quantify it. I performed the math based off the graphs, and Schultz’s release point range is roughly 208% the size of Suarez’s. Schultz’s range is about 0.92 x 1.01 ft, while Suarez’s is about 0.59 x 0.76 ft.
The first problem is intra-pitch consistency: across the same pitch, there’s too much variation in release point which leads to poor command. You simply can’t locate well without fluid and repeatable mechanics. This is probably the chief release issue, as command inside and outside the zone is Schultz’s biggest shortcoming.
Secondly, though, it’s likely a little too easy for hitters to diagnose which pitch is coming due to the different ranges in which each is released. Take the struggling sinker-sweeper combo, and you can pretty clearly see how the sweeper (right, light orange) is released further away from his body by several inches.
Turning the Page?
On Sunday vs. Oakland, Schultz appeared sharper, recording 5.0 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, and 4 K. When we dive deeper, it’s an intriguing outing, as he didn’t miss a lot of bats, yielded hard contact, and still struggled to locate most pitches where you’d want them.
However, he allowed no walks and undeniably lived more around the zone. Moreover, outside of the solo homer, the hard contact he surrendered was mostly ground balls, a fascinating development for someone who’s largely failed to induce grounders so far.
Then there was the sweeper, which dropped several more inches on average than usual, an encouraging evolution. His pitch mix was varied too, with a large increase in change-ups and decrease in sinkers, but it’s hard to put much stock in that when the Athletics only batted two lefties.
Overall, we simply can’t conclude much from one outing, but perhaps the White Sox have started to see what I’ve seen. I’d like to see further improved pitch location and another outing or two of increased ground balls and decreased walks before I trust that real change is happening.
The Verdict
Despite the results to date, I’m still not convinced that this is simply who Noah Schultz is. Guys like Dylan Cease and Lucas Giolito prove that it can take a couple of seasons for arms to blossom in the big leagues.
Yet it appears that there are obvious changes the South Siders’ pitching staff are currently looking into or still can investigate. Any serious change in mechanics will likely require a full offseason to deploy, but I’d love to see how Zach Bove and Co. manage Schultz’s pitch mix and mechanics moving forward.
Besides, we can just watch Anthony Kay’s highlights all day to soothe our minds!
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