White Sox to call up Colson Montgomery for Colorado series

On July 4, Colson Montgomery will declare his independence from Charlotte.

The White Sox's former No. 1 prospect will make his MLB debut for the White Sox in Denver during their weekend series against the Colorado Rockies. The news was broken in local-boy-makes-good fashion by Kris Norton of WITZ Radio in Jasper, Indiana. James also got word that Montgomery is joining the big league team.

The White Sox had been waiting since the second half of last season for Montgomery to make his case for a 26-man roster spot, but a mediocre 2024 season was followed by an injury-hampered spring training, which was followed by a start at Triple-A so dismal that the White Sox took him out of circulation at the end of April and sent him to Arizona for a mental reset and 1-on-1 work with Ryan Fuller, the organization's director of hitting. As he struggled and fumbled for answers, he went from being the team's consensus No. 1 prospect to falling off national top-100 lists.

While Montgomery ran hot-and-cold after returning from his sabbatical, he put himself into into consideration with a torrid series against Toledo last week, during which he went 11-for-22 with four homers, a triple and two doubles. He then opened a fresh series against Jacksonville in quieter fashion, but he maxed out his only hit in nine plate appearances with a walk-off single on Wednesday, which ended his 185th game with the Knights:

White Sox Director of Player Development Paul Janish laid track for the move in a Zoom call on Monday, saying that the White Sox would ideally call up a player while he's playing his best in the minors:

"You do want to strike while the iron's hot with a guy like that. Whether it's a pitcher or a hitter, giving them the opportunity to go up when they're playing well is definitely preferred. He's in a really good place and doing what he needs to do and putting himself in a conversation, for sure."

Montgomery hit .278/.354/.600 over 30 games since returning from his sabbatical, and while he took a wildly uneven road in getting there, that's good enough for now. The 27.6 percent strikeout rate gives some pause, but his power-and-patience platform is likely to result in a fair amount of strikeouts in his transitions to the majors no matter the timing. Otherwise, he's already on the 40-man roster and the White Sox used his first option in sending him to Charlotte at the end of spring training, so there's a good argument for testing the current form of his game against the best pitching in the world, and the White Sox are taking him up on it. The call-up will only require a corresponding move on the 26-man roster, and Vinny Capra, the victim of Clayton Kershaw's 3,000th strikeout, is the first place to look.

The question was whether they would wait until they returned to Chicago so Montgomery would make his debut in front of a home crowd at Rate Field, but Coors Field is named after Coors Brewing, which is owned by the Molson Coors Beverage Company. "Molson" is the spoonerized form of "Colson." It was all right there.