Aurora native Noah Schultz brings hometown edge to White Sox debut
Chicago Sun-Times
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Noah Schultz hasn’t come all that long of a way from the family Wiffle ball games he played growing up in Aurora.
Only 45 miles or so, by the time the https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-sox" target="_blank" >White Sox’ top pitching prospect towers over the mound at Rate Field for https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-sox/2026/04/12/white-sox-call-up-noah-schultz-sam-antonacci" target="_blank" >his MLB debut Tuesday night, carrying a good chunk of the rebuilding organization’s hopes with his left arm.
And while the limbs have elongated on Schultz’s staggering 6-10 frame, it’s still the same fiercely competitive kid who never backed down from a backyard contest with his older sisters Ashley and Emily, according to their mother, Kim Schultz.
“Very competitive family,” she said on the eve of her son's first big-league start. “The Wiffle ball in the backyard, the arguing — really the competition just was always high.”
You might not get that impression off the bat from the soft-spoken starter, at least once you get over his imposing stature.
But his mom knows it’s what first made Schultz a star at Oswego East High School, then a first-round draft pick for the Sox in 2022 and now one of the most anticipated arrivals in all of baseball, rated No. 46 by MLB Pipeline.
“He's just a different person out there, and that's what needs to happen.
He's got to focus,” Kim Schultz said. “He's probably just really, really excited and probably jumping out of his skin, but he's got a really good knack of really focusing when he gets out there and gets the ball.”
That wasn’t a concern Saturday night when the pitcher found out he’d been called up from Triple-A Charlotte. “Super excited and just pretty much screaming — literally a 15-second phone call, and he was on a plane the next day,” she said of her son, who grew up a Dodgers fan thanks to his dad, Larry.
“He's a pretty quiet kid, shy kid.
But I see the spurts of the 22-year old.
He's still young and does kid stuff,” Kim Schultz said. “But he's a big kid.”
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Noah Schultz, pictured at age 9.
Provided
Just ask the 248 hitters he struck out in the minors en route to the Sox, usually with a four-seam fastball that tops out at 99 mph or a devastating slider that invites comparisons to Hall of Famer Randy Johnson — with whom Schultz will be tied as second-tallest ever to suit up for an MLB squad.
“He’s an electric guy.
He’s an electric pitcher,” said Sox shortstop Colson Montgomery, who played with Schultz at Charlotte knows a thing or two about https://chicago.suntimes.com/white-sox/2026/03/28/colson-montgomery-white-sox-year-2" target="_blank" >shouldering big franchise expectations. “We’ve all seen it for so long.
We are all ready for it.
We know he’s a true competitor.”
Manager Will Venable said that while the team is monitoring Schultz’s innings, their potential ace of the future isn’t just coming up for a big-league cup of coffee after mowing down 19 hitters across 14 Triple-A innings this spring.
“The plan is not to bring him up and send him back out [to Charlotte].
The thought is that we bring him up here when he's ready, and go and let him do his thing,” Venable said. “He's about as nice a guy and polite a guy as can be, but he does have an edge when he goes out there.”
Schultz will have an extra home-field advantage for his first outing with some 250 supporters in attendance, including the entire Oswego East baseball team and the big sisters who schooled him in the backyard (Emily played softball at Stanford, Ashley at Northwestern).
“We've had a lot of support along the way, and you have to have that — supportive parents, sisters, family, uncles, aunts, trainers, high school, everyone — everyone really kept their eye out for him, which was so helpful,” his mom said. “This is a team effort for sure.
“I’d say I’m nervous for him, but I’m really not.
I'm like, ‘You did it.
You got it.
You got where you wanted to go.’ I'm proud.”