With our first two installments of Prospect Week -- in which we looked at White Sox prospects who have "young for the level" as an excuse for struggles, and ones who recently joined the organization through the draft or signings -- the task was to predict a story that just barely started.
Today, we're looking at eight prospects whose 2024 narratives took an abrupt turn due to injuries, lending a little bit of mystery about whether they'll be able to pick up where they left off.
Braden Montgomery
If Braden Montgomery doesn’t break his ankle at home plate during the NCAA Super Regionals, perhaps he’s not in the White Sox organization right now, because that’s the only reason he fell to Boston at No. 12 overall. Or maybe he's already part of the White Sox organization in this alternate universe because he was the position player they’d hoped to find at No. 5, no matter how well Hagen Smith fit their pitching profile. Either way, thanks to Garrett Crochet’s seamless transition to starter stardom and the complete abdication of standards at the MLB level, the White Sox no longer have to wonder about the road not taken, because both Montgomery and Smith are on their depth chart. The live pitching he sees at spring training will be his first as a professional, so whether you’re talking about timing at the plate or his acceleration on the basepaths and in the outfield, feel free to take your time setting initial expectations.
Edgar Quero
Whoever writes the White Sox features for Baseball America named Edgar Quero the White Sox 2024 Minor League Player of the Year, so he still got a decent amount done even as a tight back bloomed from a day-to-day ailment (by Quero’s initial description, at least) to a month-long absence. But it put the kibosh on a very likely September call-up. From Quero’s perspective, he went from quite plausibly looking like the best catcher on the roster in the final weeks of the 2024 season, to a Triple-A platoon with a higher-rated prospect. From the standpoint of trying to gauge Quero’s development, he hit like a star with offensive tools that suggest more of an average big leaguer -- which is still swell to have from a catcher. Swing decisions, lotsa walks and feel for hard contact have nudged Quero’s production above his Trackman numbers, and his passive early count approach is exactly the sort of method that’s hard to project until it’s let loose against the best competition. Quero has earned his place before, and while his defense is passable, it’s not a finished project, so there’s curriculum worth his time in Charlotte. It’s just that he missed a great chance to skip a grade.
Brooks Baldwin
By the final week of last season, Baldwin was taking batting practice with fringe hopes of being activated in Detroit, so his right wrist sprain has no reason to be a lingering hurdle in spring. But for a utility level prospect, a month of unfettered playing time for a rebuilding team is a golden opportunity that went by the wayside when Baldwin essentially missed all of September. Scouts like the basics of Baldwin’s swing, his MLB debut flashed solid average raw power, and anything like his 2024 first half will drag him up the depth chart regardless. That said, battling avowed shortstop of the future Colson Montgomery for the starting job in spring might be the 24-year-old cleanest route to playing time. Major league playing time at least, since Baldwin has played eight games in Triple-A.
Grant Taylor
Taylor was the White Sox’s second straight attempt at finding first-round gold in the second round by drafting a highly ranked SEC starter recovering from Tommy John surgery. Peyton Pallette had moments when the White Sox put him in A-ball rotations, but he struggled to maintain top form into the middle innings, and the White Sox shifted him to the bullpen halfway through his second pro year. Taylor, on the other hand, immediately validated the idea by laying waste to Carolina League hitters. Joining the Kannapolis rotation in mid-May, he struck out 25 hitters against nine hits and a walk over 16 innings, but before a promotion to Winston-Salem could be scheduled, he suffered a lat strain on June 7 and missed the rest of the minor league season. He was able to return for four games and 7⅔ innings in the Arizona Fall League, where the velocity popped but the command was lacking. He’ll get a chance to do it all over again in 2025, with the hopes that his explosive extension doesn’t lend itself to missing months at a time.
Mason Adams
Assuming the back issue that tied up Adams in his Triple-A debut in early August was an isolated occurrence, then his injury might be the least costly of the bunch. He missed a chance to put a bow on an otherwise stellar 2024, sure, but he was able to get back to the mound and make shortened weekly starts over the final month of the season, which allowed him to set a new professional high with 120⅓ innings. He had a similar pedestrian showing at Birmingham at the end of the 2023 season, the kind of Double-A debut that lent doubt about whether his arsenal had enough power or crispness to subdue upper-level hitters, and then he went out and posted a 2.44 ERA over 103 innings, establishing himself as the most reliable member of a stacked Barons rotation. He’ll come back with a clean slate and considerably more prospect heat, and if his five-pitch-in-any-sequence attack proves nearly as effective in the International League, he should have some MLB starts coming his way.
Alexander Albertus
Chase Meidroth, Rikuu Nishida, Eddie Park, Sam Antonacci and hopefully now, Albertus, are scattered throughout the system such that any given Sox affiliate is bound to have an answer to the gripe, “Why doesn’t anyone just try to put the ball in play anymore?” Inject an upper-level Sox executive with truth serum, and they might concede their hope that Albertus has the highest ceiling of them all, with enough athleticism and youth to hope he can still develop out of the 20-30 power grade range into which the others are locked. The rub is a stress reaction to Albertus’ left tibia already had him knocked out for the 2024 season. While the White Sox say a subsequent surgery to set the fracture didn’t push him past being ready for spring training, it’s an extra question mark hanging over a profile that has yet to thrive above the complex league, and to once more reiterate a tired point, being 20 years old in A-ball isn’t the head start it used to be.
Drew Thorpe
A glass-half-full view of Thorpe’s debut is that he ripped off five straight strong outings before his nagging elbow discomfort took center stage. Better yet, all his accomplishments, including flattening Double-A hitters for a couple of months, can be graded on the scale that Thorpe felt off all year long and 2024 showed what he could do while battling pain, related mechanical issues, off-speed pitches blending, and a fastball that was every bit as vulnerable as feared. A glass-half-empty view is that Thorpe, polished and heady enough to get better regardless, will have to work around a 30-grade fastball until further notice, thus making him vulnerable to volleys of extremely hard contact when he has to lean on it against big league hitters. The real problem is neither of these paths are in view for as long as Thorpe is still having elbow issues, even after surgery to address his bone spur.
Seth Keener
Keener’s transition from relieving to starting couldn’t quite take flight in his junior year at Wake Forest because of a crowded Demon Deacons rotation, but the plan was proceeding well enough at Kannapolis through June. The White Sox's third-round pick in 2023 closed out the month with six no-hit innings against Columbia to lower his ERA to 3.30, one of many starts where he was able to display command that made him just plain effective, as opposed to effectively wild. Then he walked four batters and plunked three more over 1 ⅔ innings against Fayetteville on Independence Day, hit the injured list and didn’t surface until the very end of August for two tough, shortened starts at a new level with Winston-Salem. He continued throwing in the instructional league, where Matt Zaleski said he’d made some strides with a changeup he needs to stick as a starter, so perhaps he was still able to achieve the necessary work to make 2024 a success. It's just that he finished 13 innings short of the 82 ⅔ he threw between college and the pros the year before, so further missed time could redirect him to relief.
