If you're only scouting the stat line on Edgar Quero, the absence of power sticks out a little. The 22-year-old catcher is batting a combined .322/.439/.391 in 107 plate appearances between Triple-A and the majors after a pinch-hit 102 mph groundout Wednesday night.
It's a hit-over-power profile, but Quero has hit 16 or more homers in two separate minor league seasons. Through the opening month, however, Quero hit one homer in Charlotte, is running a sub-.100 ISO, and just four of his 28 hits have gone for extra bases, with a low contact trajectory and fly ball rate to back it up.
"My power is coming," Quero assured.
If you've been watching Quero's first 13 games in the majors, there's no way you'd disrespect the apparent second coming of Rod Carew with such irrelevant quibbling. Quero was born a few months after Ray Durham played his last game in a White Sox uniform, but he's arrived in the majors and instantly looks decidedly not flustered by the level of pitching and stuff he's facing, which is usually a sizable initial hurdle. If you shed any plate appearance minimum, Quero has the highest contact rate on the team.
"With a lot of young guys coming up here, you're on TV every night, there's a lot more people in the stands, it can speed up," said director of hitting Ryan Fuller. "[Quero] slows the game down so well and especially, it's not just early in the count, but when there's two strikes, he moves his point of contact a little bit deeper. He knows 'I could go through that six-hole' when he's hitting lefty. Knock through that six-hole that they're leaving open. So his ability to slow the game down and let it come to him, and when they present him with, like [Friday] night, almost hit a home run on a breaking ball that’s hung, he can go after it. But when it's a fastball middle-away with two strikes, he's going to take that knock the other way, too."
It's been 13 games and 44 plate appearances, so the sample would be too small to get amped about the elite chase and contact rates he's been flashing if it wasn't a seamless transition from what Quero was doing in Triple-A. He's riding a BABIP around .400 overall and it's dangerous to assign too much repeatability to Quero doing stuff like perfectly slapping a groundball single behind the shortstop as they're racing to cover second base. But a big part of assessing hit tools is seeing in how many different parts of the strike zone players can be dangerous, and Quero's plate coverage in 2025 has been big on diversity, equity and inclusion.
(These are all his hits)
"Most of the time right now, I'm just hitting the ball line drives or ground balls, I'm not hitting the ball in the air most of the time right now, but I know that's coming," Quero said. "I'm not focused on that right now. I don't want to be doing big swings or stuff like that thinking about my power. Homers are just, if you make a good swing, put the ball on barrel with a good angle, it's going to be a homer. Let it come naturally."
Which is to say, this is not someone who is selling out for pop and coming up short. Maybe you thought Quero's ninth-inning flyout to the wall off Mason Miller last Friday might leave the park, but Edgar never did, viewing it as more of a two-strike swing to fight off a slider which he got under a little more than he intended. It helps that Quero's early results are so clearly displaying what his strengths are, because Fuller is not of the mind that he should move off them.
"You look at each guy and you say, 'What's their skill set right now? What do they do really well?'" Fuller said. "Q controls the zone really well, really good contact rates. And he hits the ball at really productive angles. So instead of saying, ‘Man, we’ve got to max out your power right now,' let's really leverage what he's doing well: give us great at-bats, make contact and hit the ball on line drive trajectories. And as we go on, we'll be able to build that engine more and more in the weight room, in the cage with his routine. So that's one thing that he's going to be looked at, and he wants to be the best in every area, but it's really encouraging when it's controlling the zone and hitting line drives all over the field."
Which is not to say there's some huge windfall coming for Quero's power necessarily beyond the 10-15 range. He's a short-levered man with a tight and compact bat path, his top-end exit velocities indicate fringe average power, and there's a quote from him higher up on your screen already confessing that he's not going to sacrifice his contact-heavy approach to pull or lift the ball more. The initial Statcast readings of Quero's bat speed have been well-below average, but also in-line for someone who is way more tilted toward making contact with a short swing path than loading up for maximum impact.
"He’s been able to give solid at-bats right out of the gate from both sides of the plate," Chris Getz said. "He’s got a short stroke, quality pitch recognition, his two-strike approach is really strong. He’s making it look easier than it actually is. We’re gonna continue to run him out there."
And provided that Quero is going to keep being run out there, a safe bet to stick in Chicago even with Korey Lee on the mend from an ankle sprain, the best assurance that the young backstop will run into more power is that he's done it before. He slugged .463 just last year while winning the organization's internal award for best minor league hitter. Quero's judicious swing decisions and willingness to take a walk will coax out his share of pitches to drive, but even moreso, Quero's raw physical tools have never been the main driver of his prospect hype. Rather, it's been his consistent production, so when he says his power is coming, maybe he deserves some benefit of the doubt for a while.
"Right now I'm just focused on taking good ABs, trying to hit the ball and trying to help the team win games," Quero said. "I feel like my power is going to be there."
