As Prospect Week roars into motion, we'll be rounding up dozens of White Sox prospects into five groups that provide the guise of a cohesive thematic element, while also balancing the number of players into a more reasonable daily workload for us, and a more digestible daily reading load for you.
Regardless of the category, the idea is to provide a snapshot of where each player stands entering the 2025 season. Starting off, here are 11 White Sox prospects who have a little bit of time on their side before their initial performances are cemented into a hard-and-fast trajectory.
PERTINENT: The White Sox have prospects in 2025, but do they have a system?
George Wolkow
Were the 17-year-old Wolkow drafted a decade ago, when the Great Falls Voyagers provided White Sox prospect coverage a pleasant late-summer change of pace, we’d be mostly relegated hearing tell and the occasional fuzzy phone video of the 6-foot-7-inch titan turning equally raw pitching into meteors all over Montana. In the era of teenagers taking hard knocks in the Carolina League for every MiLB.tv subscriber to see, Wolkow’s viral line drives are counterbalanced by the 40-percent strikeout rate that everybody understands is unsustainable. He’s got no choice but to absorb daily failures as he syncs his preposterous levers into something repeatable. The production around the strikeouts is commendable for an 18-year-old – .238/.333/.416 on the strength of a .407 BABIP – and so’s his level of determination. Those who aren’t in control of his arms and legs should continue treating the low-minors stage as the multi-year project it always was. Downers Grove.
Javier Mogollón
Wolkow and Mogollón were fast friends in the complex league. With their foot difference in height and different cultural backgrounds, it made for a lot of fun mismatched photos, but less fun when Mogollón one-upped Wolkow’s in-zone swing-and-miss issues. Whiffing at Joey Gallo rates in complex ball is usually grounds for release, but Mogollón’s issues spiked at the time he was installing a leg kick geared toward improving his pitch recognition. Owing to his speed, hustle, ACL defense and legitimately impressive exit velocities – especially for a 5½-foot tall teenager – Mogollón produced (.259/.406/.525) around the empty hacks. But it will need to be a temporary affliction, as his Mighty Mouse build presents its own challenges.
PERTINENT: Javier Mogollón will put your head and your heart at odds
Jeral Perez
Short, stout and prone to smiling, Perez is still clinging to a middle infield spot despite less than ideal range. His under the hood numbers also more readily support a claim of average hit and power tools rather than plus, but Perez’s feel for pulling and lifting the ball has produced power numbers that outstrip the raw ingredients (39 extra-base hits in 105 games last season), while also making it possible to sneak the occasional four-seamer over his barrel. This is cool when Isaac Paredes does it, but he has the credibility that repeatedly producing above-average results against major league pitching affords. Perez will have to repeat his 2024 success at every new level. He’s no guarantee to immediately overwhelm the competition, and even at 20, minor league contraction doesn’t afford him infinite time
William Bergolla
What do you do with a slight-of-frame, sub-6-foot second baseman who’s holding his own as a hitter in High-A at 19? If you’re the White Sox, you acquire him from Philadelphia for Tanner Banks at the deadline and play him at shortstop. Bergolla moved to the left side of the infield over his final 22 games of the season with Winston-Salem and handled it admirably, which is the first step in filling out a utility profile. He hit .300/.359/.381 over 357 plate appearances in the Carolina League, striking out just 38 times against 29 walks and stealing 27 bases in 33 attempts. He’s the son of a major leaguer (and teammate of Paul Janish), and so he draws the usual pedigreed compliments about his understanding of the game. But also, he hit just one homer and 16 total extra-base hits, so from here, he faces the typical question of whether he’ll be able to scare more advanced pitchers for enough production to allow his other skills to surface.
Samuel Zavala
He was young for High-A, manned center field, cut his strikeouts from the previous year and took his walks at a precocious rate, but there are simply not many incidences of future impact players posting a .187 batting average across a full minor league season. Zavala did that, completing a quartet of players who came over for Dylan Cease last spring in varying states of out of sorts. The White Sox asked the young Venezuelan outfielder to add strength in the offseason, which can be a blanket explanation for addressing a variety of swing/stability issues, but does bring a note of irony. Zavala’s above-average max exit velocity is probably the sexiest element of his current Trackman profile.
Eduardo Herrera
The White Sox made Herrera the highest-paid non-Cuban international signing in franchise history when they handed him a $1.8 million bonus to open the 2024 signing period. The 17-year-old third baseman with a power profile then hit .197/.323/.250 with zero homers and 44 strikeouts over 159 plate appearances in the DSL, and now Marco Paddy is out of a job. Those two facts aren’t directly linked, but it didn’t help.
Ryan Burrowes
When Burrowes strides out for infield practice, he gets clocked as the toolsy athletic prospect even by folks who don’t have the roster handy. When Burrowes speaks – and since the Panama native is masterfully bilingual he often serves as an extra interpreter – he can elucidate the mechanical adjustments he’s making with convincing clarity. But two years stateside has yet to provide on-field performance in line with the toolkit, with Burrowes chase and in-zone miss rates both emerging as obstacles (107 strikeouts in 77 games at Kannapolis), despite a midseason change to set up his hands closer to the launch point.
Ronny Hernandez
Hernandez signed for $30,000 in 2022, and he’s impressed at three different levels in three different seasons. Most recently, he hit .273/.387/.328 over 96 games with Kannapolis while spending the entire season at age 19, walking more times (62) than he struck out (59) over 413 plate appearances. With his bat-to-ball skills, understanding of the strike zone and a left-handed swing, there’s a starter pack for a catching prospect of note. He’ll either have to improve beyond a Low-A form of passable behind the plate, or hit for considerably more thump than the 16 doubles and one homer he produced for the Cannon Ballers, but he’s done what he’s supposed to do and then some before turning 20.
PERTINENT: Seeing what's the deal with Ryan Burrowes and Ronny Hernandez at Kannapolis
Abraham Núñez
Núñez survived the jump from the DSL to the ACL, hitting .292/.382/.371 over 207 plate appearances and finishing the short season with his best work by far, a .407/.485/.463 line with just 12 strikeouts over 66 plate appearances in the final month. That’s the sort of trend in production you’d hope to see from somebody undergoing a significant change in his setup. The idea is that it’ll equip him to survive his Kannapolis debut, whenever that occurs in 2025.
Christian Oppor
A JUCO arm who has yet to pitch in full-season ball, even that description might undersell Oppor’s rawness. Originally a cold weather kid from Wisconsin badly in need of more game reps, Oppor’s athletic frame is growing into mid-90s velocity and his natural pronation bias lends hope to building out a swing-and-miss changeup. Oppor’s understanding of his pitch shapes profile was threadbare before stepping into a White Sox pitch lab, and his walk rates (16.5 percent in 2024) and zone percentage affirm his greenhorn status. A slowburn development plan was quite literally the plan upon acquisition, but it can’t be restated enough that current minor league headcounts don’t allow for infinite patience.
Luis Reyes
The more Dominican teenagers touching 95 mph that the White Sox have in their employ, the happier they and their followers will be. But since being the headliner of the 2023 international class, Reyes has been hit too hard (89 hits in 80 career innings) and sprayed his secondaries around too wildly (51 walks) to be an individual source of confidence. His tools are such that “but it seems like things clicked for him in the bullpen” wouldn’t be a shocking conclusion to this shaky opening, but it would be forgivable to forget about this project if/until it forces its way back into conversation.
