That SMF-SFO flight has burned me more than once. The fun thing is that when the flight gets cancelled, they give you voucher to pay the full taxi fare from SMF-SFO. The taxi drivers all get super excited. The unfun thing is you miss your connection. I would absolutely press them to see if they can give you an SFO-ORD flight and drop the outbound. Sac gate staff are also unimpressive for rebooking, etc.
Oddly the one time this happened to me, if they had just cancelled the damn flight when they found the huge dent in it rather than 2 hours later, I'd have made my connection.