Left-handed pitching is a luxury that few organizations in Major League Baseball have an abundance of.
The Chicago White Sox might not have much at the big league level - Martín Pérez is the only left-hander in the current starting rotation - but their minor league system is loaded with promising young southpaws.
Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith are the two biggest names that most fans are familiar with. Both of them were first-round draft picks by the White Sox, and given the organization's track record with developing lefties like Chris Sale, Carlos Rodón, and Garrett Crochet, optimism about their futures is warranted.
24-year-old Shane Murphy has also burst onto the scene in 2025. Murphy started the year in Winston-Salem, but has advanced as high as Triple-A Charlotte this season with a ridiculous 1.58 ERA across three levels.
Murphy's production has earned him multiple organizational awards, flirted with Southern League history, and firmly planted him in the mix for the 2026 starting rotation in Chicago.
Christian Oppor is another left-hander on the up and up. A fifth-round pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, Oppor is now the No. 8 prospect in the White Sox organization. In 22 minor league starts with Kannapolis and Winston-Salem, he has a 3.08 ERA and 11.9 K/9 this season.
The 21-year-old has three "plus pitches" and his mid-90s fastball recently touched 101 on the gun.
Chicago has left-handed pitching in droves, and Lucas Gordon is another underrated prospect that proved he belongs in the conversation during the 2025 season.
Lucas Gordon
Gordon was selected one round after Oppor, in the sixth-round of the 2023 MLB Draft.
Hailing from the University of Texas, Gordon has been productive at every level throughout his entire professional career, but his lack of power stuff makes him fall short of most prospect lists.
Gordon put an exclamation point on his 2025 season with six scoreless innings for the Birmingham Barons over the weekend in his final start of the year. Gordon has made four starts in Double-A, and three have them have been scoreless efforts.
With a 9-5 record and 2.23 ERA in 2024, I was bullish about Gordon getting a chance at an advanced level of the minor leagues earlier this season. He's an experienced college starter that is already 23 years old and had earned a chance to prove himself against better competition. It took longer than I wanted, but perhaps for good reason.
While lack of run support has Gordon sitting with a 3-11 record this season, that's not reflective of how he's thrown. A 3.59 ERA across two levels is more than respectable, and 9.7 K/9 is impressive for a pitcher without overpowering stuff.
Nine (9) hits surrendered over 21.1 innings in Double-A is a great sign for the future.
It's hard to argue with production, and Lucas Gordon has been an effective starting pitcher everywhere he's been. In college, he had 2.87 career ERA in 210 innings pitched. In the minor leagues, he has a 2.80 ERA in 231.2 innings. He was also an effective reliever for one summer in the Cape Cod League.
The good pitchers tend to force a call-up even if they don't have overwhelming stuff that makes them a highly-touted prospect. We're officially getting into that territory with Gordon.
He'll likely start the 2026 season in Double-A at 24 years old. With another good year, he'll be in the mix to get a shot in Chicago. It'll get competitive, but the White Sox can never have enough left-handed pitching.