Headed home after a winless road trip, beset by injures and riding a very early eight-game losing streak, the White Sox are reaching for their first dose of top prospect talent infusion from Triple-A Charlotte. A source confirms that infielder Chase Meidroth will have his contract selected and be added to the major league roster.
After clearing Juan Carela off the 40-man roster on Thursday, the White Sox will need to clear another to add Meidroth. But while the White Sox have sought to trim the fat off their 40-man roster to make room for injury replacements, Meidroth competed for the starting shortstop job all spring, was brought in as part of the Garrett Crochet trade, and is hitting .267/.450/.600 in Triple-A so far this year through nine games.
(Also, for those monitoring the clock, Meidroth starting his season on Friday means he won't accrue a full year of service time should he stick on the roster the rest of the season.)
His arrival much more likely signals the opening of a regular role in a White Sox offense that has scored 16 runs over its last eight losses and entered Thursday with the fourth-worst on-base percentage in baseball. Jacob Amaya is 3-for-29 with three singles while taking up the bulk of the playing time at shortstop for the Sox so far.
"I love short," Meidroth said at the end of spring. "You are kind of involved in every single play, so that a big thing for me. I love defense. I love taking hits away. So, yeah, shortstop was awesome here."
Meidroth has over 130 career games at the Triple-A level and his unwillingness to chase outside of the zone was well-established before the first two weeks of this season. It's that the diminutive contact hitter has already connected on three home runs in nine games that stands out. Part of the reason Will Venable gave at the end of spring for why Meidroth needed more development time was a lack of aggression and production in the strike zone, and while neither his approach nor raw power have changed overnight, his early swings have displayed more feel for loft and driving the ball in the air, albeit in a very friendly hitter's ballpark.
"In sitting down with Chase, he's a player that had some really good at-bats throughout spring training," Chris Getz said before Opening Day. "Showed us what he was capable of doing. We've got some areas of focus for him, but we challenged him at shortstop throughout spring training and did a really nice job."
With Colson Montgomery beginning the year with pronounced offensive struggles that suggests a longer path to balancing a skill set that's now leaning distinctly power over hit, and even Kyle Teel cooling off after a monstrous opening week, Meidroth is the top-producing, most qualified White Sox prospect of note, and has a chance to address a major league area of need.
That the White Sox didn't think Meidroth was quite ready to break camp with the team after a long look is a reminder to anticipate developmental hurdles, especially for a player trying to figure how his unique skill set will work around a typical major league ability to impact the baseball. But the White Sox's current state of affairs is already maxing out the pain threshold of its day-to-day viewers, it always makes it a little more tolerable if it feels like it's in service of a better future.
