GLENDALE, Arizona - As the Arizona Fall League winds down, Hagen Smith noticed something different as he arrived at Camelback Ranch for his fifth start Tuesday night for the Glendale Desert Dogs.

“I had an idea,” Smith said while pitching in front of more than two dozen White Sox officials that included general manager Chris Getz, manager Will Venable and Hall of Fame advisor Tony La Russa.

“Especially when I came to the parking lot, and it was full.”

The 6-foot-3, 235-pound Smith, the Sox’s fifth top prospect by MLB.com, gave Sox evaluators less to stress over as he posted his most dominant and convincing performance of the AFL season.

The inconsistent starts due to bouts of wildness vanished. Smith’s velocity topped out at 97 mph, and his control caused Peoria’s batters to occasionally chase competitive pitches barely out of the strike zone.

His smooth mechanics led to four consecutive strikeouts over two hitless innings. This marked the first time Smith failed to pitch three innings in the AFL, but his workload was curb so he could pitch in the league’s All-Star Game on Sunday night at Sloan Park in Mesa.

“When you have shorter outings, you can have an inning that can go a little bit sideways in the overall numbers, but his process is much better,” Getz said as Smith threw a 96.8 mph fastball past Enrique Bradfield Jr., the Orioles’ fourth best prospect, to start the game.

“Ever since late August through September, and in the playoffs, he’s been able to continue to do that. We still got work to do. He knows that, but he’s a great competitor.”

Smith is determined to earn an eventual promotion to the Sox despite his billing as their first pick in the 2024 draft out of Arkansas and throwing only 75 2/3 innings at Double-A Birmingham last season, not including a five-inning performance in the Southern League playoffs in which he strike out 10 and allowed no hits against Chattanooga.

“I still got to work on my mechanics,” said Smith, who walked 56 with a first-pitch strike rate of 48.3 percent at Birmingham, according to Fangraphs. “I’m throwing the changeup more. I used it a lot in my last outing.”

Smith said he tripped on his cleat while throwing a changeup Tuesday and struck primarily with fastballs and sliders after that. That provided to be a devastating mix, as he threw 16 of 23 pitches for strikes.

That was a considerable improvement over his previous four starts, in which he walked six in 12 innings and posted a 60.8 strike rate.

In each of those four starts, one wild inning has skewered his strike rate. In one start, he needed 11 pitches to strike out the first two batters of an innings, but a wild pitch on a third strike led to a two-run home run.

Tuesday, Smith focused on staying “slow and smooth.” That was evident as he went to a three-ball count only once.

After Smith struck out Cam Collier, the Reds’ first pick in the 2022 draft, on a foul tip on an 83 mph slider to end the second, many of the Sox’s officials - who were in town for meetings prior to the GM meetings next week in Las Vegas - left their seats and conversed on the concourse while in a satisfactory mood before leaving the park a few innings later.

“He’s continuing to work on his changeup, just to have that third pitch weapon against right-handed hitters and, on occasion, against lefties,” Getz said. “But that fastball and slider are two very impressive pitches that are going to serve him well.

“It’s been fun to see how his season has progressively gotten better, and it should only give him more confidence going into spring training.”

Pitching in a controlled setting with three-inning limits has enabled Smith to make up for some of the innings he lost in April while staying in a starting routine and not laboring.

“I’m still treating it like a normal start,” Smith said. “You can’t think you have only two or three innings, because then you can become unfocused.”

With top pitching prospect Noah Schultz shut down due to right knee discomfort, Smith seized the pitching attention this fall.

Sox officials spent the first part of the offseason scouring free agent lists and scouting potential free agents and Rule 5 candidates currently performing in the AFL.

But the fulcrum of the Sox’s long-term hopes lies in its starting pitching prospects, and Smith is aware that the organization isn’t afraid to accelerate the path of players to the majors without a prescribed innings or at-bats resume.

“They don’t say you got to pitch X amount of innings to get promoted,” Smith said. “You prove that you’re pitching well, they move you up.

“As a player, that’s really good to hear. I think it’s every player’s dream to get up fast. And I think it’s cool that we got an opportunity to do that.”

Competition doesn’t intimidate Smith, who credits playing in the Southeastern Conference for three years prior to being drafted fifth overall by the Sox - ahead of fellow conference competitors Jac Caglianone (Florida) and Christian Moore (Tennessee), whom each already have reached the majors.

Smith also was drafted seven spots ahead of Texas A&M outfielder Braden Montgomery, whom the Sox acquired from Boston in the blockbuster Garrett Crochet trade last winter.

“My freshman year I was lucky enough to throw a lot and I got to fail a lot,” said Smith, who was the Razorbacks’ No. 2 starter as a freshman. “Just working with failure, being able to deal with that helped me.”

With Schultz and Smith, the Sox possess two frontline starting pitchers who are accustomed to the big stage. Smith struck out 161 in 84 innings and earned 2024 SEC pitcher of the year honors.

“He does seem like a guy that performs well under the lights,” Getz said. “When you know there’s something at stake, he really seems to elevate his game. I think that a lot of that goes back to college and being the Friday night starter.”