As someone of an age where I became a teenage wiseacre White Sox fan at the outset of the Ken Williams era, SoxFest never appealed to me.
Baseball players were better at playing baseball than talking, I reasoned, and allocated funds accordingly. And while the front office's wintertime sales pitches on how a rejiggered roster could make a surprise move to snatch the AL Central varied in their persuasiveness -- 29-year-old Scott Podsednik coming off a down year seemed particularly dubious -- the games always quickly cut through the static.
This year's stripped-down return of SoxFest, two nights at a smaller venue the White Sox are nonetheless struggling to fill, lacks the same vitality while competing for even more jaundiced eyeballs.
There is no path to contending for a playoff spot to sell, and a Sox front office that prides themselves on their realistic grasp of the situation at hand won't pretend otherwise. The current trade offers out for Luis Robert Jr. aren't headed up by prospects with star potential, so more tearing down isn't imminent, but neither he nor fellow former All-Star Andrew Benintendi are scheduled to attend, so recognizable names are still limited. Even Andrew Vaughn, the team's Clemente Award nominee who is always down to serve as the team's public representative, could be sidelined from festivities by inclement weather affecting travel. The catharsis of fans confronting ownership about the desultory state of the major league product, which some other team's fan fests offer, is not on the event schedule. Chris Getz will be available, but you'll just be haranguing a man who long since resolved himself to endure the scrapes of dragging the organization out of the woods.
"I hope we reach a point where we're not looking to make trades on a regular basis," Getz said. "Knowing who you're going to be watching at shortstop or center field or starting tonight, I value that. I think it's really important for our game, not just the White Sox. We're just not quite there yet to be able to solidify that. So whether it be Dylan Cease and Garrett Crochet and other players that we've moved, those players are fan favorites. But the reason they're fan favorites is because they're really good major league players and attractive to other clubs as well. Gotta do what's best for the organization."
Asked for a sales pitch for the weekend and for signs of organizational improvement from this time last year, Getz offered the progress of the farm system to a fan base that largely feels like they erred in trusting the prospects less than a decade earlier. Improved prospect depth is straightforwardly the strength of the organization and Getz is right to harp on it, but he's speaking to an audience that has seen gaudier plaudits than the Sox having MLB Pipeline's two highest-ranked left-handed starting pitching prospects -- hell, they've watched a team that sent two left-handed starters to the All-Star Game -- and still been left disappointed.
Prospect optimism will still be delivered with vigor at The Ramova this weekend. Giant local prep products George Wolkow and Noah Schultz (now six-foot-10, 240 pounds) can provide visuals for what high-ceiling athletes look like, and not just when they duck under doorjambs. The closing panel of the event on Saturday will introduce new trade acquisitions Braden Montgomery and Kyle Teel, as well as recent fifth-overall pick Hagen Smith. Schultz, Smith and Montgomery will all be at major league camp in Arizona, setting such a spring focus on development that Getz rounded off lauding Martín Pérez's clubhouse impact to clarify that he is expected to "also provide productive innings."
As publicly reserved as he might have been as an assistant coach on the North Side, new manager Will Venable seems well-suited to present the image of a manager who is preparing to helm a professional operation this spring. He alluded to leaning on Vaughn and Benintendi for player insight on the needs of the team, has such experience scheduling an MLB team's camp activities that off-loading that duty to Drew Butera means he's even more plussed in the face of the enormous task than usual, and the nature of the team's free agent pursuits are such that the opportunity-seeking veterans brought in are already sold on the idea that Venable is a stylistic match for them.
"Let Will call a guy, meet with a guy, we’ll have a group of coaches spend time with them and gosh, I feel like it worked in our favor very often," Getz said, lauding the effort of selling the White Sox as a happy landing spot for veterans seeking bounce-back years. "Because Will demonstrates it, others do in the organization: We’re very honest, honest about where we currently are and where we want to go. We might find something we feel we can improve."
But the last manager the White Sox hired already picked the rhetorical lane of "experienced and respected baseball man bringing seriousness and 'elite preparation' to a staid operation," and then associated it with the worst two-season run in franchise history. So just like all the prospects on display, Venable faces a long path to winning over converts on the field. Maybe a longer one, since you can find a highlight of Colson Montgomery hitting a Triple-A home run more easily than video of Venable running a staff meeting.
As a toolsy and affable young Midwesterner of above-average height, Montgomery is still just one of many in the White Sox farm system. Where he stands more apart is as an attraction who can both be embraced as relevant to the future beyond his trade value, and is a new feature worth following as part of the 2025 team.
"We expect to see Colson Montgomery playing shortstop for the White Sox this year at some point," said Getz, whose actions back his words. With "the heavy lifting" of the roster finished, no veteran stopgaps have been signed to stall his ascent, and the competition Getz outlined for the shortstop job -- Josh Rojas, Chase Meidroth, Brooks Baldwin -- all more likely profile as utility types not designed to hold him off for long.
Like the Sox farm system as a whole, there are concrete reasons to be optimistic about Montgomery, even if he's not at a prospect value high-water mark. Comfortably plus raw power and plate discipline are good things to have from a middle infielder, even if smoothing out the long levers of his hit tool was most recently limiting their impact.
"He made some real material changes to cover certain pitches and getting back to the player that we had seen throughout the minor leagues," Getz said. "He's going to get a shot to make the club."
So too have the White Sox made material changes that fuel their internal optimism going forward. But there's a reason why even the team's advertisements for single-game tickets seem to linger on simply lauding the benefits of being outside on a summer day. Selling seats to watch an interstitial step of gradual progress taking hold is a bear, especially in January.
