If the prospect sleuths at Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus or MLB Pipeline are to be believed, the best White Sox prospect in minor league camp is not towering outfielder George Wolkow, but the second player ever drafted out of Okemos High School in Michigan*, brawny infield prospect Caleb Bonemer.
Like Wolkow, the 2025 season will be in the rearview mirror before Bonemer celebrates his 20th birthday. And while Wolkow has the build and raw power to invite Paul Bunyan comps, Bonemer is the one whose professional track record has been made into tall tale. The penny-wise, pound-foolish elimination of short-season leagues by MLB leaves teams with no logical assignment for a cold-weather high school player. Even one like Bonemer, who touts enough power and feel for utilizing it to the pull side to draw a $3 million signing bonus out of the second round, but was probably too green for Kannapolis last August.
"The thing that sticks out to me is like, his two-strike approach and how serious he takes that. It's like a fight," said White Sox farm director Paul Janish.
Because Bonemer's professional action has been reduced to unofficial "Bridge League" games against other players stuck at their respective team complexes, instructional league, and other baseball activities for which no tickets are sold and the stats don't make it to Baseball Reference, Janish's rave reviews have been the primary source of updates on his progress up to this point. And one man can only do but so much, because what Bonemer already is and already does proficiently makes him a curious inversion of the typical teenage high school power-hitting prospect, who will probably be more richly enjoyed the closer he is observed.
Yet another Bledsoe client, Bonemer spent the offseason training at the agency's complex in the Nashville area, and spent the winter picking the brain of Colson Montgomery about life in pro ball. While he's too young to be resigned to his 6-foot-1-inch, 195-pound listing, Bonemer is less lanky and projectable like Montgomery, but rather could easily pass as someone who has been in a MLB's org's lifting regimen for a few years now.
While some scouts put double-plus raw power projections on Bonemer, it's more predicated on how close he already is to it, rather than banking on bulk being added to a lanky frame. His feel for using this power to pull and lift the ball is mature enough that Bonemer, irked by his popup rate as a junior, has worked to make his swing path a bit more level with the trust that his ability to reach the left field bullpen will remain steady.
"I've always had that ability to hit homers, pull the ball," Bonemer said. "So if I can go the other way, that'll clean everything else up. I don't need to try to hit homers or any of that. I just try to hit low line drives, good mechanics, quick to the ball. If I can do that and go the other way, everything else will take care of itself."
As is conceivably the case for most midwestern high school baseball prodigies who bash their way straight to the pros, Bonemer realized heading into senior year that most of the pitchers he was facing at Okemos High -- wrenching their bodies just to eclipse 80 mph -- were not preparing him for the professional velocity he would see in a year's time, or even on the showcase circuit where big-time performances at Area Codes and Perfect Game National rocketed him up the White Sox draft board. So he had dabbled with high-speed pitching machines in high school like the iPitch, before using it more this winter with Bledsoe, and now diving into it even more with the Trajekt machine at Camelback Ranch.
"My whole life, I've been able to just kind of be an athlete, just react to the pitch," Bonemer said. "But now I've got to learn how to hunt zones, hunt pitches. Because I can't sit and react to 95 mph like I could sit and react to 75 mph, so that's definitely a big thing. It's being able to learn how to commit to a pitch, commit to a zone, and doing that stuff has definitely been a big help."
Despite the work he did to get ahead, old videos of Bonemer's swing were sort of revealing about his level of competition versus his already developed strength. Rather than the traditional post-high school development project of ironing out excessive moving parts, Bonemer's swing was quiet enough to hear a pin drop, to the point where he's been working to add more rhythm to its opening. Muscle memory is formed via repetition, and Bonemer has been at this too long to resist the urge to mimic loading his hands and dipping into his hips as he discusses the tweaks.
"I'm a pretty strong kid, so I don't need to load up," said Bonemer, telling the truth. "Kind of my problem before is I was super still. And it was just one move, straight to the ball and I kind of cut myself off. But now, if I get a little bit more rhythm, everything sequences up better, and my direction will clean up as well."
Just as no one spends much time lamenting that Isaac Paredes doesn't play shortstop anymore like he did throughout the minors, actualizing Bonemer's pull power drives his prospect profile more than the eventual defensive home, and the White Sox's historical struggles to develop such hitters regularly places their investment into such an offensive skill set under the spotlight. Janish is operating under the mindset of "make him prove he can't do it" for Bonemer at short, but also thinks he'll probably accumulate some reps at second and third base to prepare for a move that many evaluators anticipate.
With Montgomery and especially Jacob Gonzalez, the White Sox have some more advanced defenders at the position in the system, and if Bonemer's bat pulled him up fast enough that it triggered him to move over a spot to accommodate, he doesn't sound like he would mourn it. He's not aiming to stay hidden for any longer.
"I'd love to play shortstop," Bonemer said. "But honestly I'll play wherever moves me up the ranks quicker. I'll do whatever it takes."
*Only Patreon supporters get to learn that the other was Paul Quantrill.
