White Sox vs. Guardians Today: How to Watch Hagen Smith and Tanner McDougal MLB Debuts

Ozzie Guillén spent an hour on Foul Territory this week defending the White Sox front office for a deadline it did not blow up.

“They don’t want to destroy the minor league system. They don’t want to do damage to them, and I agree with that,” he said. “They cannot go there and say, OK, as a fan, I want to get rid of the minor leagues and bring all those guys that can help this year. But when you’re thinking with your brains, that can get you in trouble later. It cost the White Sox a couple of years building this minor league system together.”

Two days later, hours before his No. 13 goes up on the wall, the White Sox called up the two arms that system was built around.

How to watch

• Matchup: Cleveland Guardians at Chicago White Sox
• First pitch: 6:15 p.m. CT / 7:15 p.m. ET, Saturday, Aug. 8
• Venue: Rate Field, Chicago
• TV: Fox — AJ Pierzynski on the call
• Probables: Anthony Kay, LHP (8-5, 4.01) vs. Gavin Williams, RHP (11-6, 3.56)
• Ozzie Guillén ceremony: 5:15 p.m. CT, CHSN exclusively
• Giveaway: First 15,000 fans receive a replica Guillén jersey

Ozzie Guillén’s Number Retirement: How to Watch, and the AJ Pierzynski Line That Steals It

White Sox lineup: Sam Antonacci LF, Munetaka Murakami 1B, Miguel Vargas 3B, Colson Montgomery SS, Andrew Benintendi DH, Braden Montgomery RF, Tristan Peters CF, Chase Meidroth 2B, Drew Romo C. Anthony Kay starts.

Guardians lineup: Steven Kwan CF, Jo Adell RF, Chase DeLauter DH, Ángel Martínez LF, Rhys Hoskins 1B, Brayan Rocchio SS, Travis Bazzana 2B, Austin Hedges C, Angel Genao 3B. Gavin Williams starts.

Williams is the wrong pitcher to draw. He has 55 strikeouts over his last five starts — the most by any starter in a five-start span since 2024 — with game lines of 11, 11, 11, 12 and 10.

The White Sox broadcast jinxed itself

During Friday’s game, the White Sox broadcast was discussing Steven Kwan and wished aloud that he would stop trying to hit for power.

Kwan homered on the next pitch.

He leads off tonight in center field.

Cleveland’s deadline pickup bats second

The Guardians got Jo Adell from the Angels on Aug. 4 for catching prospect Jacob Cozart, and the reason was specific: Cleveland entered the deadline 29th in the majors in runs per game and 28th in OPS against left-handed pitching.

Adell has a .910 OPS against lefties this season in 130 plate appearances. Anthony Kay is a lefty.

He also has the strangest highlight reel in baseball. On April 4 against Seattle he robbed three home runs in one game. On June 2 a ball bounced off his glove and off his head and over the wall for a four-base error.

His bat speed is 77.3 mph, 97th percentile in the majors. He is under club control through 2027.

Left-hander Hagen Smith and right-hander Tanner McDougal are both up from Triple-A Charlotte, per Ian Eskridge of FutureSox and MLB.com’s Scott Merkin. Both are expected to work out of the bullpen. Noah Schultz and David Sandlin were optioned in the corresponding moves — Chicago cleared both spots with pitchers.

Why now

Because Will Venable accidentally removed his own starter in the first inning on Friday.

Schultz had faced five batters and thrown 25 pitches when pitching coach Zach Bove made a mound visit — under 10 seconds, right after Schultz hit Jo Adell to load the bases. Two pitches later Ángel Martínez singled in two runs. Venable walked out to execute an appeal play and triggered the automatic removal that comes with a second visit in the same inning.

“That was a mistake by me,” Venable told Chicago Sports Network’s Brooke Fletcher during the game. “Lost track of the first visit there. Went out to go execute an appeal, and just missed that.”

Afterward, to Merkin: “Just an inexcusable mistake by me where we had an appeal play that we wanted to execute, and in the urgency of trying to make that happen, just totally lost that we had visited.”

David Sandlin, recalled from Charlotte earlier that day, had not thrown a warmup pitch. He came in cold and threw 5.1 innings. Chicago lost 8-2.

That was one night after a 13-inning loss to Boston in which the White Sox followed Luis Castillo with seven relievers. A staff that was already empty burned its long man on no notice, and by Saturday morning there was nothing left.

Then the injury news: Chris Murphy to the injured list with a left flexor strain, Joey Bart to the IL with a fractured fifth metacarpal, Austin Hays released.

The White Sox have lost four straight since the deadline. Their AL Central lead is down to two games over Cleveland and Minnesota, with Detroit 3.5 back.

The fan reaction on X was some version of the same thing. “They’ve used so many pitchers, they had no other choice.” And: “Right in time for Ozzie Guillén Day.”

Hagen Smith

He was the best left-handed pitching prospect in the 2024 draft and the White Sox took him fifth overall out of Arkansas for $8 million.

That spring he won SEC Pitcher of the Year and set an NCAA Division I record with 17.3 strikeouts per nine innings.

Then the hard part. His stuff and control regressed through most of his first full professional season. He missed seven weeks in May and June with elbow soreness, spending the time at the White Sox training complex rebuilding his mechanics. The fastball that had touched 99 dropped into the low 90s. The slider lost its sweep.

He finished strong, helping Double-A Birmingham win its second straight Southern League title, then starred in the Arizona Fall League.

At Charlotte this year his ERA is 4.32 over 58.1 innings, which undersells where he is right now. Over his last five bullpen appearances he has thrown 5.1 scoreless innings, allowing one hit and one walk with eight strikeouts.

MLB Pipeline grades the fastball and slider both at 60 — well above average — and the control at 40, which is the whole scouting question. His quick arm, low slot and crossfire delivery create deception and a flat approach angle, and also make it hard for him to stay in sync. Chicago has been working on slowing him down and keeping him balanced over the rubber. If he finds even fringe-average control, Pipeline says, that could be enough for a frontline starter.

He is the No. 2 prospect in the system and No. 51 in baseball. He turns 23 on Aug. 19.

He has been in this ballpark before, in different pants.

That was two months after the draft, against Cleveland, in khakis. Tonight is also against Cleveland. The khakis stay home.

Tanner McDougal

McDougal took the long road and nearly did not survive it.

He was one of the biggest winners of the first MLB Draft Combine in 2021, turning a strong showing into an over-slot $850,000 bonus in the fifth round, 155th overall. He made six appearances in Rookie ball that summer, blew out his elbow, had Tommy John surgery that October, and did not make his full-season debut until 2023.

In 2025 he took the step. A 3.26 ERA with 136 strikeouts in 113.1 innings between High-A and Double-A.

This year at Charlotte he has a 2.86 ERA over 34.2 innings. Since coming off the injured list on July 7 he has worked 10.2 innings in relief with a 2.53 ERA and 13 strikeouts, including multiple multi-inning outings — which is probably what Chicago wants from him tonight.

The stuff is loud. Pipeline grades his fastball a 65 — it sits upper 90s and peaks at 101 — with a 78-82 mph curveball carrying so much spin and downward break that it is difficult both to hit and to land for a strike. His upper-80s slider is the more usable of the two.

Control was the problem. It got him demoted to Single-A in July 2024. He spent that offseason getting into better shape and located far better last season. He is the No. 4 prospect in the system, just outside the top 100, and at 6-foot-5 and 185 pounds there is still room on the frame.

The plan was always this

Both are starters long term. Both were moved to relief roles at Charlotte in what has been described as a deliberate organizational plan — get them big league innings in 2026 without disrupting the development track.

That is what Guillén was praising before he knew it was about to happen.

“They did a great job at the trade deadline,” he said. “They kept the big prospects with the organization.”

Chicago added Luis Castillo, Liam Doyle and Joey Bart in July and held everything else. Smith and McDougal are the first two of the group to reach the majors.

Baseball without borders

Twelve of the 47 players on the White Sox 40-man roster and injured lists were born outside the United States.

Five come from the Dominican Republic: Luis Castillo, Huascar Brazobán, Prelander Berroa, Junior Pérez and, until the deadline sent him to Seattle, Seranthony Domínguez. Two from Venezuela in Luisangel Acuña and Wikelman González, with Jedixson Páez, Everson Pereira and Lenyn Sosa also appearing this season. Two from Japan: Munetaka Murakami, an All-Star in his first major league season, and Rikuu Nishida. Two from Cuba: Edgar Quero and Miguel Vargas, also an All-Star. Tristan Peters is Canadian, and José Urquidy is Mexican.

Three of them are in tonight’s lineup. Murakami hits second, Vargas third, and Peters bats seventh in center.

The coaching staff runs through two more countries. First base coach José Léger is Dominican. Bullpen catcher Luis Sierra is Colombian.

And the man whose number goes up at 5:15 came from Ocumare del Tuy, Venezuela, as a teenager without English.

Ozzie Guillén Day

Guillén becomes the 13th individual in franchise history to have his number retired and the first manager the White Sox have ever honored that way. Harold Baines, Mark Buehrle, Paul Konerko and AJ Pierzynski will be on stage. The club is donating a portion of the night’s proceeds to earthquake relief in Venezuela.

Full details on the ceremony here.

He also named two of tonight’s starters as the guys he likes on this team. Antonacci, leading off, is “not exceptional talent, but everything he does is to win a game.” Vargas, hitting third, is “the glue in this ball club.”

Two pitchers who have never thrown a major league pitch will spend the pregame watching a manager get a number retired for what he did with a roster nobody expected anything from either.

One more thing

There is another Hagen Smith. He plays professional beach volleyball, he is the son of the legend Sinjin Smith, and he was bitten by a shark at 15.

Not the one making his debut tonight. Worth knowing before you go searching for highlights.