If baseball adopted hockey's three stars of the game, Colson Montgomery probably would have taken top billing in the White Sox's thrilling 11-9 victory over the Rays in Tampa on Wednesday. He contributed the two most important hits in his five-RBI night: a game-tying three-run homer in the second inning, and a two-run double that put the White Sox ahead 8-7 in the eighth.
Kyle Teel would've been right behind him. He recorded his first four-hit game, including his first homer, and also scored three runs for the first time in his career.
While Teel's evening included lots of nascent-career highs, signs of an offensive breakout have been building. He carried a .368 OBP into Wednesday's game against the Rays, the sign of a rock-solid plate approach, and the contact had been growing louder. He barely missed hitting his first homer in front of the Sox Machine/From the 108 crowd at PNC Park Saturday, as his line drive hit the very top of the 21-foot right field wall. Had Roberto Clemente worn No. 20, Teel wouldn't have had to stop at second. Instead, he had to wait two starts and four games for an unimpeded trot.
"Just making small adjustments to get short to the ball," Teel told James at the All-Star break, downplaying some work to manage the size of his leg kick. "I'm hitting the ball hard, just at people, so it's part of the game."
Teel is now hitting .277/.390/.373, so he's on his way to closing the gap in slugging percentages (Statcast has his xSLG at .498). He's been shortchanged with significant moments, and more should be around the corner. In terms of what just popped on the radar, Wednesday night's game was a bigger breakout for his athleticism.
Teel made for a slightly strange headliner in the package of prospects the White Sox received from Boston for Garrett Crochet, if only because the White Sox already had a catcher of the future in Edgar Quero. For his part, Quero has made it difficult to pick a favorite child, because he beat Teel to the majors and has been holding his own both at the plate (.264/.344/.350) and as a game-caller.
But Teel brought with him a few distinct selling points that made him worth the risk of redundancy. He offered more power potential, his left-handed swing had a better track record of damage against right-handed pitching, and the thing tying it all together was his athleticism.
Wednesday's game was a showcase for him in that regard.
Among catchers, Teel's sprint speed puts him in 80th percentile. Statcast clocks him at 27.5 feet per second, which ranks ninth among 74 catchers (Korey Lee is eighth at 27.7; Quero is 58th at 24.9), and his makeup speed saved a run, then scored one.
In the fifth inning, he failed to block a Brandon Eisert changeup in the dirt for strike three with the bases loaded, but he averted disaster by chasing down the ball and flipping to Eisert, whose glove touched Junior Caminero's heel before Caminero's foot touched the plate.
Later in the eighth, Teel didn't get a great read on Montgomery's go-ahead double. He retreated toward second for a potential tag-up well after Luis Robert Jr. started full speed ahead from first, and that could've spelled a baserunning boondoggle with a slower catcher gumming up the works. But Teel had the ability to restart his momentum and beat the throw home, which also allowed Robert to get to third as he'd originally planned.
Robert then scored one batter later when the contact play produced a panicked throw home.
As impressive as these plays were, they were also preceded by a rookie mistakes. Teel should've smothered Eisert's changeup in the dirt, and he could've jogged home were it not for his overly cautious initial reaction, so while it's great that he sprinted his way out of multiple binds, he made his own trouble to begin with.
The counterpoint is that every player makes mistakes, and this kind of physical capability increases his margin of error. Also, there's another example of his athleticism from Wednesday night that didn't make the highlight reels, but probably should have.
Let's go back to the first inning, when Chandler Simpson reached on a tricky spinning one-hopper that ate up Chase Meidroth. Fresh off three steals the night before that got him to 30 on the season, Simpson sized up No. 31 against Jonathan Cannon, and Cannon's curveball out of the zone gave him a great pitch to get it.
Teel almost got him instead.
Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and then Diaz homered on the next pitch to give the Rays a 2-0 lead to immediately overshadow it, but even the Tampa Bay broadcast marveled at the way Teel reached down as his body came up, and his halves met in the middle with a sidearmed, on-target throw that would've nabbed all but the league's fastest runner.
"The consistency is the key," catching coach Drew Butera said of Teel's throwing accuracy. "The footwork is very similar every single time. He rarely gets away from the mechanics that make him work and make him accurate."
It's too early to call a winner between Teel and Quero, especially while sharing the playing time behind the plate benefits both. They're less likely to wear down at the end of what should be their longest seasons, they complement each other as hitters, and neither has to shoulder the entirety of game-planning duties as they learn the finer points of it at the major league level.
"The catching position is just such a comprehensive role with the responsibilities," said Chris Getz. "I think we're going to look up and they're going to have a pretty solid body of work at the major league level for the first time in their careers. I view it as a benefit to have two quality catchers like we do."
But while there are a bunch of nuances to the discussion, athleticism isn't one of them. Teel has the clear edge that can manifest itself in multiple ways, and it's worth tracking how much weight that carries against Quero's selling points if and when it's time to settle the tab.
