It's hard to define the boundaries for the different generations, but new White Sox outfielder Mike Tauchman spent part of in his introductory Zoom talking about attending a Cubs-Cardinals game during the 1998 home run record chase, whereas new White Sox prospect Braden Montgomery was born more than 18 months after Mark McGwire's last big league game.
In having Montgomery talk to reporters on his phone from an airport lounge while Tauchman chimed in about the benefits of staying close to his hometown in Palatine with a new baby daughter in tow, the White Sox likely did not intend thematic consistency by having the future and present of their right field job available to media on the same day.
But news hooks don't grow on trees, and the rugged realism that Tauchman's path -- twice traded, once DFA'd, a KBO stint and non-tendered after objectively the two best seasons of his career -- has afforded him is a healthy contrast to the idealism that still surrounds Montgomery's status as the biggest upside swing of the Garrett Crochet deal.
Although, last week's trade was Montgomery's strongest dose of professional reality to date.
"My first reaction was just kind of shocked," said Montgomery, who has yet to play a professional game after fracturing his ankle playing for Texas A&M in the Super Regionals in June. "No one at my point in their pro career was expecting [that] to happen. All my peers from the USA team, all my college teammates who were recently drafted, they didn’t even know that was a possibility. But after that settled in, I was just excited, excited for the opportunity. It’s a great opportunity."
Montgomery describes his right ankle as effectively healed, with no restrictions on his running or hitting beyond a focus on continuing to strengthen his leg in the weight room. When healthy, Montgomery has enough speed and athleticism for Chris Getz to openly express curiosity about him playing center field, which the 21-year-old says he prefers, even if right field seems like the probable outcome for him and his plus throwing arm.
While Montgomery's power potential is such that a 90 percentile development outcome for him involves hitting for enough pop to be valuable in an outfield corner, Tauchman's positional projection at age 34 is rooted in utility. The 2025 White Sox will be better the more he is relegated to a corner, but the risk that Luis Robert Jr. is traded or injured puts them in a position to appreciate Tauchman and Austin Slater's fourth-outfielder skill sets. It's a one-year deal and rebuilding teams and role players tend to enjoy short marriages, but such an arrangement isn't an affront to how Tauchman has been forced to see the baseball world, especially in the wake of a non-tender from the Cubs that he regarded as "not a complete surprise."
"I was very fortunate to play for awesome veterans who really cared about the team and the clubhouse and sort of those intangible things," Tauchman said. "It’s on me now to sort of continue that, in terms of I know the guys who made me feel good or comfortable, and in a couple situations I know the guys that didn’t. And I would never want to a young player to feel, for me to make a young player feel the way a couple guys at different points in my career made me feel. That does matter to me a lot. Everybody, there is that part of your job is to show up and do your job because everybody is fighting for the next year. I felt like I’ve been playing for the next year since 2013."
There's more to mine in the coming weeks about what leapt forward in Montgomery's offensive game in his junior year and how it will translate to professional baseball, but he was quick to direct attention toward his private hitting coach Jeremy Isenhower with Premier Baseball in Tomball, Texas. Montgomery's coverage of the upper third of the zone improved as a junior as he whacked 42 extra-base hits in 61 games, and he felt commuting regularly to Tomball was part of boosting his understanding of how different pitchers would attack him from different arm angles.
A veteran of far more hitting coaches, Tauchman said he's excited about rekindling his good relationship with hitting coach Marcus Thames from their Yankee days, which included a 2019 power spike that he's yet to replicate elsewhere in his career. Filling in for the Sun-Times' Cubs coverage in 2023 as Tauchman was growing into an OBP-focused platoon leadoff man role, he'd developed into hitter who draws a ton of walks, but refuses to glorify passivity as a merit in the batter's box. If he winds up being a tonic to aggressive, quick and unproductive at-bats in the White Sox lineup, it's only because opposing pitchers forced him.
"I don't go up there like saying, 'I want to see eight, 10 pitches in this at-bat,' because honestly, I don't think that's long-term sustainable for success," Tauchman said. "But one thing I will say is swinging outside the strike zone is really not a recipe for success for anybody. It's definitely not for me. So the better I can be inside the strike zone and limit my chase outside the strike zone, the better off I feel like I'll be."
Tauchman posted his highest chase rate since 2020 last year, and yet his 20.2 percent out of zone swing percentage was lower than that of any returning White Sox hitters. Slater operates similarly, and beyond their desire to build out a platoon on the cheap, they both fit the mold for a Sox front office trying to give opposing pitchers a less easy time in 2025. But at his age and power production, an opposite field-tilted spray chart prompted Jim to question whether Tauchman can continue to inspire the same amount of caution from the opposition. While Tauchman allows that his typical contact point is in line with a "see it deep," mindset, he felt his fascination with left field is something he's working to keep as a one-year anomaly.
"For like 80 games, the wind blew in 20 miles an hour from right field like every day at Wrigley last year," Tauchman said. "So I think that subconsciously, maybe to a detriment, I got a little too opposite-field oriented. That's something I'm trying to make a priority this offseason is to move my sights or move my direction a little bit more to, not even the pull side, but center field. The theory being the bad, in-zone off-speed is what you pull, and if you can still stay hard up the middle-ish with fastballs, that's going to give you the biggest chance of success."
A realization of these goals surely sees Tauchman, who is coming off a two-year run of a .360 OBP, courted as a short-term role player by contenders at the deadline. And on top of the White Sox's early enthusiasm for his services and a clear path to playing time, this is surely a bit of the thought process in his coming to the South Side. But Tauchman explained that as analytical as people often think him to be, he's been playing too long to ignore the impact of all the unquantifiable details of in-game execution and clubhouse environment, and that his conversations with Will Venable about addressing those areas in which the White Sox have clearly been deficient was another motivating factor.
In talking with people on the player agency side this past week in the Winter Meetings, I asked if a tenure with the White Sox was treated over these past few awful years as something to be endured. While they always understood the question, the common counter is that "it's still the big leagues," and still an opportunity to create tremendous value if handled correctly. The White Sox at present don't offer many dreams of playing playoff baseball, but no player worth their salt looks at their wide open depth chart and thinks the situation will override their talent. Not even a spot as historically troubled as White Sox right fielder.
"I'm not sure," Montgomery said when asked if he looked at the White Sox as an organization where he could fly through the minors. "I’m just excited to step on the field. Me being able to get on the field and show the strides I’ve gotten are going to be what advance my chances the most. I’m just excited for that opportunity."
