TEMPE, Ariz. -- Colson Montgomery would hardly view his back spasm blip as a refutation of his work, but his offseason was geared at keeping him healthy and keeping him at shortstop.
"I was like 240 pounds in the offseason so I felt like I needed to lose it and I like being a little bit lighter," said Montgomery, who lost around 10-15 pounds. "It was to be more athletic and to be what I am, because I want to be a shortstop, and I felt I had to lose some weight to be a shortstop."
Montgomery's fitness plan was driven by his defensive ambitions, but he reasons it can help his rotational speed in the batter's box as well. But as Montgomery quite predictably gets spammed with velocity above the belt this spring -- which can only help prepare him for getting spammed with it in the season too -- his plan for addressing doesn't lie in becoming newly able to square it up.
"That's what we're working on a lot; I just need to not fall into that trap and get back to what I'm hunting and not what they want to do," Montgomery said. "Once they see that I won't swing at any of the stuff upstairs, then they've got to come to me. And if they don't come to me, I'll take my walks."
Because the current headliners of the White Sox roster don't constitute the core of a contending team, a common question is who is a potential sleeper this year?
Pitching coach Ethan Katz is often an interesting person to ask about rising prospect arms. Because while he's aware of what's coming in the system and had even watched video of Noah Schultz before he was drafted, his focus is so firmly planted on the needs of the major league staff that for someone like Mason Adams, it's almost like fresh eyes, and it's an evaluation based more on viewing how this pitcher could help him piece things together in Chicago, rather than projecting a prospect's best-case scenario.
"Awesome, he's a sleeper," Katz said of Adams. "He's everyone's pick to click. When the time is right, and I don't know when that will be, he can do a lot of things with the baseball really well."
A back injury stalled out Adams' 2024 rise at Triple-A last season after he was quietly the steadiest performer of a prospect-laden Birmingham rotation, but the former 13th-round pick said it was a non-issue in his offseason work after a few weeks off at the close of the season. If you isolate his pitches by performance, Adams' slider -- a self-described "sweeper, slurve kinda thing" -- is the 25-year-old's standout weapon and his changeup lacks the velocity separation from his low-90s heater to rely on heavily. But isolating Adams' pitches misses his appeal. In a world of increasingly specialization for pitchers and for what shapes they are asked to produce, his use of multiple fastballs and breaking balls stands out.
"As my career has gone on in pro ball, that's where I found I was having success," Adams said. "Change speeds and being able to tunnel pitches off of different kinds of stuff. Maybe when I was younger it was more to throw the nastiest stuff I can. But I've definitely learned a lot."
"He can do so many different things," Katz said. "That's the one thing we have quite a few guys [for]. Davis [Martin] can do a bunch of different things with the ball. [Sean] Burke can do a whole bunch of different things with the ball. It really helps when you look at a starter that you can handle whatever storm comes your way. When you become one-sided, it becomes tough to be a starting pitcher. But they can handle so many different things with their plethora of pitches."
Neither the successful first two months of Jordan Leasure's rookie season (he had a 2.52 ERA in 25 innings on June 1), nor a quick downturn before he was optioned to Triple-A in June, nor the last few outings before shoulder impingement ended his season, featured consistent sightings of the dominant four-seam fastball that made him an intriguing half of the Lance Lynn trade.
He had been tasked with repairing the timing his delivery during his brief run in Charlotte, getting his arm to the same spot when his front foot landed as he did in 2023. And as he picked away at the same project this winter, Leasure started to see his 2024 season as one connected story.
"Once I felt good, [the delivery issue] fixed itself as well," Leasure said. "Because I wasn't compensating for pain or anything. I knew that getting healthy was the main thing and then I was able to focus on other stuff. Just feeling good fixes everything else too."
With a slider that dives heavily to the glove side, Leasure has been on the hunt for a secondary that will play to left-handers, who slugged .537 against him in 2024. A high-70s looping curveball was his primary choice last season, but while Leasure could grab strikes with it, it diverged from his fastball too much to earn many chases, or for the right-hander to comfortably toggle between max effort heaters and commanding the big breaker. This spring Leasure has turned to a splitter, with a grip-it-and-rip-it type of mindset with the pitch that matches the adrenaline of his fastball.
"The curveball, I feel like I have to change too much in my release to try to throw it well," Leasure said. "The splitter I feel completely comfortable just ripping it. Same hand position, same arm speed. I'm just thinking about finger pressure constantly. So everything just feels better, just throwing it hard and I don't have to think about it too much."
One screenshot from Baseball Savant to explain the White Sox's trade interest in Tyler Gilbert.
"I'm trying to roll that into this year with the same things that made me successful towards the end of last year," Gilbert said. "They noticed that, that’s what they told me right when I got traded. Just stick to my strengths and stay healthy."
Beyond making himself a coveted piece for the White Sox reserve of unusual deliveries, Gilbert has observed more running action on his two-seam fastball since dropping his arm slot, and feels the side-winding motion makes his sweeper play up visually to hitters. After his second scoreless two-inning outing of the spring on Friday, the boost in stuff has Gilbert sitting in the bucket of arms who will eventually be sorted between winning the fifth starter job and serving as a multi-inning reliever.
But he notably refers to his new delivery as a return to his "natural" arm slot, and the beneficiaries of the change go beyond a rebuilding team looking to scrape up value from overlooked players.
"When I was more over the top, I had a lot more arm issues," Gilbert said. "Biceps, triceps, shoulders. My arm hurt a lot more. Now, I just feel like it's more natural for my body in that slot. It's taken a lot of stress off my arm, so it feels better too."
