Colson Montgomery, the White Sox's top position prospect, is far enough long that not a moment of his Zoom call with reporters on Wednesday was wasted on the career milestone of being added to the White Sox 40-man roster. More time was spent on his feelings about not being called up to the majors last year, in Charlotte while so many of his friends were toiling through an 121-loss season, something Montgomery regards as disappointing but in the sense that he wished he had earned it, rather than coated with a sense of injustice.
He speaks similarly about his Arizona Fall League tenure; a delirious .313/.511/.646 line with more walks than strikeouts in 11 games. The 22-year-old regards it as a necessary step to end his season swinging loose and aggressively attacking his hot zones the way he needed to be, but also finds it fairly aggravating that his 2024 campaign required such a coda.
"Sometimes you've got to make sacrifices," Montgomery said. "I would have much rather had a full offseason. I played a little more than half, or less than half, of the Fall League. Right after the season, [getting to the offseason is] all you're thinking, but then when they tell you they want you to go to the Fall League, you kind of have some bitterness in you with it all. But at the same time, I kind of took that as a challenge, and I was like, 'All right, I'm going to go prove and show the guy that I am and everybody knows that I am and that I can be.' I had to put my ego and pride away for a little bit and just know this was the best thing for me. For the long-term career, too, and figuring everything out."
We published a story in late August titled "Colson Montgomery's prospect path is at a crossroads," and he would probably agree with the material elements and pick a softer a headline. His body getting bigger did require some tweaks in his mechanics and he certainly blames himself for getting pull-happy, chasing power and trying to "muscle" his way through his swing too often. And that was also around the time he had a Zoom call with White Sox personnel and his representation at the Bledsoe Agency to congress about his wayward offensive campaign.
But Montgomery also feels he's better than ever defensively, having improved his internal clock and become more anticipatory in the field, and sticking at shortstop remains as central to his view of himself as a player than ever. He fielded an introductory phone call from new White Sox manager Will Venable earlier in the day Wednesday, and even though he has another conference call with the team scheduled later in the week, isn't waiting for that to declare his ambition to be the team's everyday shortstop in the majors in 2025.
Maybe it's the way Montgomery perfectly framed his agency's logo behind him in his Zoom call, but he gives the impression of someone who feels his career trajectory got the requisite speed bump that a life in baseball requires, rather than a player who had to seriously doubt whether he was good enough to hang at the highest level.
"I have a whole bunch of hunger and frustration," Montgomery said. "Not disappointment and embarrassment in myself, but that fire in me that I always want to do good and the fact that I didn’t perform the way I wanted to for most of the year, it kind of drives me crazy. It’s fueling the fire in my offseason work. I...not really have to prove myself again, but have to get back to where I was and get back to being the guy everybody knows that I am."
In talking to a veteran scout about him Tuesday night, they expressed surprise that Grant Taylor, a hard-thrower with a powerfully-built lower half who they view as a likely reliever, throws so many dang pitches at such an early point in his professional development -- fastball, cutter, slider, curveball, changeup.
In talking to reporters via Zoom on Wednesday afternoon, Taylor expressed enjoyment of the exchange of ideas since the White Sox drafted him out of LSU while he rehabbed from Tommy John surgery in 2023.
As it turns out, both observations originate from the same source: Taylor's curiosity about pitching.
Noticing some small differences in movement of various breaking balls since returning from TJ, Taylor latched onto a knuckle-curve grip shown to him by pitching coordinator Matt Zaleski that he felt added five inches of vertical drop and helped him dominate over four outings at Low-A Kannapolis.
Since that early season slate and rehab from a "pretty tough" lat strain, Taylor has also added a Davis Martin-style kick changeup that has cycled its way through the White Sox organization. He lauds it for its movement, even if control is still a work in progress.
"I think it came down from him," Taylor said. "Davis was throwing it and it was on Pitching Ninja. And two weeks later Eric Adler is throwing it, and two weeks later I’m throwing it. The movement is really, really good. It’s going to be a feel thing for. There are some days where I can hit the mitt wherever I want and there are some days where it starts moving a little too much and I don’t have as much control of it."
That's a good microcosm for the duality of Taylor's prospect status. He posted a 9.39 ERA across four short AFL outings, marred by a blowup in his first time out and seven walks in 7⅔ innings, and plenty of scouts see a college arm with too little track record of strike-throwing to confidently place in future White Sox rotations. At the same time, Taylor works in the high-90s with elite extension, and the potential that his stuff teases with so few innings under his belt -- both collegiate and professional -- suggests a high ceiling that just requires actual time on the mound to realize. Still just 22, Taylor regards his choppy AFL as his first taste of how little out-of-zone chasing he can count on getting at the highest level, but also validation that his stuff is good enough to carry him to success inside of it.
With eight bridge league outings on backfields before he resurfaced in the AFL, Taylor feels well-positioned health-wise to end next season making full six-to-seven-inning outings, even if he's running far shorter out of the gate. And he's still close enough to the days where he was the projected Friday night starter for LSU that seeing his former rotationmate Paul Skenes take the league by storm is a confidence builder; a sign that he's not nearly as far away as his light track record would suggest.
"I’ll talk to him and he’ll tell me different stuff that he notices throughout the league, and he’s like, ‘You can be here very soon, dude.’" Taylor said. "He’s super confident in me, and then seeing him do all the stuff and him being super confident, believing in himself at the highest of the highest levels. He’s a Cy Young finalist, he was one of the best in the league this year. I think it’s pretty cool for one of my really, really good buddies to believe I can be right up there with him."
