Two years after being taken 15th overall in the 2023 MLB Draft, Jacob Gonzalez is playing more second base than shortstop at Double-A Birmingham, accommodating the rise of fellow prospect William Bergolla. He's even played a few games at third base, which hints at a utilityman future without disrupting the 23-year-old, as evidenced by his one error committed in 61 games in the field.
"I like the turn from second on the double play, and I like the flips from second, the throws to turn, I think that's fun," Gonzalez said. "I didn't play shortstop until I was a sophmore in high school. So I played every other position growing up just so I could play. I mostly played second base growing up."
Chase Meidroth is admirably holding down the job in the majors, Colson Montgomery is still drawing most of the attention as the White Sox shortstop of the future, and Caleb Bonemer's emergence in Low-A makes him the next-toolsiest threat. That, but also very much the slow pace of Gonzalez's offensive development, has pushed his progress to the background.
After a decorated and championship-winning career at Ole Miss, Gonzalez was an under-slot pick who was supposed to offer a polished game and a high floor. That his demonstrated power (14 homers in 230 pro games) has not matched his college production (40 in 186), and his overall hitting progression has been more of a slow boil than a flash fry, means the initial vision of his growth is already by the boards.
But slow motion is measurably different from no motion. Gonzalez has been up front about his gradual progression through the different stages of a major swing adjustment, and is now playing the best baseball of his professional career 160 games into his tenure at Double-A, running a .381 OBP at Birmingham for the month of June.
"Hitting-wise, started off slow, better now, but still getting to two strikes too much right now, in my opinion," Gonzalez said.
It's not uncommon for hitters to have visible differences between their standard swing and the two-strike version. What's rare is that when Gonzalez slips into a deeper crouch, ditches his small leg kick and starts bailing out to fight off back-foot sliders, it's a window into an earlier stage of his development before arriving in the White Sox organization.
After slashing .207/.328/.261 in his 30-game pro debut at Low-A Kannapolis, Gonzalez said he and the White Sox agreed to make a series of adjustments that the latter party said was biomechanically informed. They wanted to straighten out Gonzalez's direction to stop him pulling off the ball, which had both provided him the gift of lofting homers to right field in SEC ballparks, and issues with covering pitches on the outer half; let alone driving them. Gonzalez also stood more upright, with a more narrow base aimed at activating his near average raw power.
Gonzalez saw some of the benefits right away, earning a bump to Double-A last year after hitting .273/.364/.399 in 36 games at High-A where the production was fairly backloaded. But upon exposure to Southern League pitching, Gonzalez felt his mechanism for keeping his weight back was lost in his adjustments, and hit just .225/.284/.321 last year at Birmingham.
"I felt like I could hit a fastball, and then once there was a wrinkle and the fastball wasn't just automatic, I couldn't pull the trigger," Gonzalez said. "Last year, I was just kind of like doing the move, and then swinging. Just because I had never done it before. Now it's just all feels like one motion. I don't really think about it anymore, and I'm just trying to always be just thinking about my approach. With the direction work that they had me on, it's helped me and the leg kick has helped me to have more power to the whole field, as opposed to before, I was always right-center to the right field line."
Gonzalez installed the leg kick as a means of keeping his weight back in the final days of 2024, before a few big games in the Barons' playoff run encouraged him to stick with it through the offseason. It's evolved into a smaller, more reliable move, but Gonzalez has hit .299/.359/.492 over his last 35 games in Birmingham by placing some limits on it.
He's rarely drifted above a 15 percent strikeout rate at any point of his career, but Gonzalez's outer half coverage issues have led him to swing-and-miss in the strike zone slightly more than average, and he's not a strict swinger either. He stays alive because he makes a staggering amount of chase and two-strike contact, but he was striking out more than he cared to early, and decided to go back to what is still his most natural mode of swinging.
"In the middle of May, I decided, 'All right, I'm just gonna get low with two strikes and do what I've always been good at with two strikes,'" Gonzalez said. "Before that, I'm going to go with my tall leg kick and try to do damage that way. And it's been working, because before two strikes, I have been hitting the ball consistently harder than I think I normally have. I don't have the numbers, but then with two strikes, I've just been able to put the ball in play. Sometimes you get hits out of it, sometimes you don't. But I mean, personally, it makes you feel better when you don't strike out."
Ever since being put on a more aggressive strength-building regimen midway through last season, Gonzalez has noticed an uptick in the steam he has behind his softer two-strike swing, even noting a 104-mph double the other week. He also believes there's still enough residue from his direction work to spoil pitches on the outer rail of the zone. But generally his offensive results have lagged behind his superb strikeout-to-walk ratios or his max exit velocities because Gonzalez puts so much weaker contact in play.
"I mean, before two strikes, it's better to just miss the ball sometimes, which I need to be okay with," said Gonzalez, who doesn't suffer swings-and-misses easily. So, knowing his own tendencies, Gonzalez is concentrated on avoiding getting to two strikes altogether, and being more judicious about what he deploys his A-swing on. He dedicates whole batting practice rounds to being spammed with strikes on the margins, pitches he's often swung at because they're in spots he could get to, but maybe not with much thump.
Especially back into his two-strike crouch, Gonzalez trusts what he's capable of when he's down in the count, and also has let everyone get a good look at the limitations he presents from there as well. With still another full season after this one before he's Rule 5 eligible, how many impact swings Gonzalez can fire off earlier in the count will be the barometer of what kind of role he can work himself into for the White Sox's future plans.
