Only a few weeks remain in what the Chicago White Sox would probably tell you has been a season of progress for the organization.
The big league team surpassed their 2024 win total on August 1, and has seen the impact of several top prospects at the Major League level this season.
It hasn’t been a great year for every White Sox prospect, however, and what the White Sox hoped would be a big time breakout season for top lefty Noah Schultz has instead been filled with adversity.
Now, that season will come to a premature end, as Schultz is being shut down for the season with tendinitis in his knee.
A frustrating 2025 season for Noah Schultz is now over
The 22 year-old Schultz impressed folks both inside and outside the organization with his stuff the past couple seasons. Perhaps the team’s biggest goal for him in 2025 was to get innings under his belt and position himself to go deeper in ballgames later in the season.
Unfortunately, multiple IL stints have limited Schultz to just 73 innings pitched in 2025.
2025 wasn’t all bad for the lefty, who made it up to Triple-A Charlotte and seems to be in a prime position to make a big league impact in 2026, but the White Sox will once again need to be careful with his innings, as 2024’s 88.1 innings are currently his career high.
Ultimately, Schultz will finish the 2025 season with a 4.68 ERA in 17 starts between Birmingham and Charlotte. It wasn't the pure dominance we're used to seeing from Schultz, but he's still refining his arsenal with the pitching development staff. I don't believe there's any reason to panic.
Originally, the plan for Schultz was to send him to the Arizona Fall League in October along with seven other White Sox prospects to make up for some of the innings lost to injury.
Unfortunately, just a couple weeks after being activated, Schultz experienced another flare up of the knee injury that caused him to miss a month earlier in the season, and the team has decided to pull him from the AFL roster.
Right-handed relief pitcher Jarold Rosado, who was acquired from the Kansas City Royals in the Paul DeJong trade last season, will replace Schultz on the AFL roster.
Noah Schultz is likely to miss the AFL, as the White Sox don’t want to rush him back this year after a recurrence of his patellar tendinitis.
— James Fegan (@JRFegan) September 9, 2025
Reliever Jarold Rosado (Paul DeJong trade) expected to replace Schultz on the roster.
On the bright side, a knee injury should be much less catastrophic for a pitcher than an arm injury. Schultz will have a chance to get the knee back on track this offseason and report to 2026 Spring Training healthy.
Schultz is likely to begin the 2026 season in Triple-A, but should be in the conversation to make his MLB debut at some point during the year.
The former first-round pick has all the talent in the world, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s impacting the Major League team in a big way. White Sox fans need to remember that.