The Birmingham Barons repeated as Southern League champs with their 6-3 victory over the Montgomery Biscuits in Game 3 across Wednesday and Thursday, and like a lot of sequels, it didn't quite have the spark of the original.
At least depending on how you look at it.
If you only judge the Barons by the quality of the Double-A baseball they played, the 2025 team was definitely stronger over the entirety of the season compared to the 2024 version, as evidenced by the league's best record powered by the league's best pitching. What they lacked in offense they made up for with unparalleled run prevention, with their 3.36 runs allowed per game more than a half-run better against the next closest competition. They were edged out of a first-half division title, but then won the second half with extreme prejudice before prevailing in both postseason series by going 4-0 on the road. That's a great story, and while the championship atmosphere was lacking, they can't be held responsible for a storm suspending the game and forcing them to record the final out in front of three people.
In terms of it being reflective of a farm system that will supply a future White Sox 26-man roster with significant contributors, however, there's not quite as much to tout.
Part of the reason these Barons were so strong from start to finish was that so few players graduated. The 2024 team turned over nearly half the roster -- and an entire rotation -- as it closed in on a first-half title. In 2025, most of the guys who started the season in Birmingham ended it there. Here's the list of notable prospects who moved up over the course of the season and stayed up:
| 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Mason Adams Brooks Baldwin Ky Bush Jake Eder Tim Elko Jairo Iriarte Edgar Quero Bryan Ramos Drew Thorpe | Jacob Gonzalez Shane Murphy Grant Taylor Noah Schultz Peyton Pallette |
Jacob Gonzalez was the only position player to be promoted out of Birmingham, but it took until the end of July, and it was less about Gonzalez's performance warranting the look at Triple-A, and more about opening up the infield after the arrival of Sam Antonacci.
At the time the Sox shoved Gonzalez upward, the charitable interpretation was that the suffocating nature of the Southern League had flattened his performance. The eight-team association was the most punishing environment for offense in Minor League Baseball, after all:
| League | Level | R/G | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific Coast | AAA | 5.83 | .803 |
| California | A | 5.24 | .706 |
| International | AAA | 4.94 | .750 |
| Florida | A | 4.87 | .691 |
| Northwest | A+ | 4.86 | .725 |
| Texas | AA | 4.62 | .705 |
| Midwest | A+ | 4.59 | .693 |
| Carolina | A | 4.49 | .665 |
| South Atlantic | A+ | 4.30 | .663 |
| Eastern | AA | 4.19 | .680 |
| SOUTHERN | AA | 4.01 | .660 |
But then Gonzalez followed up his .244/.305/.369 line over 89 games in Birmingham with a .204/.310/.293 line over 45 games with Charlotte, and it was fair to conclude that the Barons simply lacked standout hitting, even before Paul Janish up and said it in September.
"Tim Elko, Brooks Baldwin, some of these guys that have been in that league, they had good offensive numbers," Janish said. "Maybe the power numbers relative to their ability is down, but they do still have relative offensive success. So I feel like while offensively the league is down maybe as a whole in terms of numbers, I still think there's some context you can point to. If you're talking about guys who are going to the big leagues eventually, they're still finding a way to have some offensive success in that league."
Whatever offensive success the Barons enjoyed took a very limited and specific form, but credit the lineup and manager Guillermo Quiroz for understanding the situation. The Barons are able to raise a pennant because he let their freak flags fly.
"We don't have guys who can hit many homers," Quiroz flatly said back in August about a team that ended up totaling just 52 of them in 138 games. "So I gotta work with what we have: small ball, bunting, stealing bases, taking extra bases, putting pressure on the defense, that's our game."
By the end of the season, Quiroz installed a top of the order whose production wouldn't have looked out of place on the 1885 Birmingham Coal Barons ...
- Rikuu Nishida: .403 OBP, 0 HR, 40 SB
- William Bergolla: .342 OBP, 0 HR, 40 SB
- Sam Antonacci: .435 OBP, 1 HR, 21 SB
... with the hopes that if they couldn't score by the power of their will, maybe Ryan Galanie would drive them in.
It worked, by and large, thanks to a pitching staff that thrived in a most unexpected fashion. If you only knew two things -- that the Barons started the year with Noah Schultz, Hagen Smith and Grant Taylor headlining the rotation, and that they ended the year with a sub-3.00 team ERA -- you'd probably expect those facts to be connected.
And you'd be a fool. Schultz's Birmingham encore wasn't much of one due to patellar tendinitis, Smith's mechanics required more immediate maintenance than expected for a fifth-overall pick, and Taylor was shifted to the bullpen in order to expedite him to the White Sox after two months. Meanwhile, a parade of anonymous lefties did the heavier lifting. Shane Murphy, Jake Palisch and Tyler Schweitzer all pitched circles around the seven-figure draft picks, but not in a way that inspired much enthusiasm from White Sox player development. Schweitzer was humbled by six rough weeks in Charlotte, Murphy couldn't get promoted to Triple-A until the last two weeks of the season despite one of Minor League Baseball's best ERAs and lowest WHIP, and Palisch traveled the ultra-rare Birmingham-Chicago-Birmingham path. He still hasn't spent a day in Charlotte, but he was DFA'd.
It's amazing what the Barons accomplished without the usual indicators of prospect legitimacy, but it also makes it difficult to derive greater meaning from their title. Perhaps there's real future MLB value, but it's just emerging on a delay. Smith could very well flip the switch, Bergolla looks like a candidate for a glove-first shortstop role, Antonacci hasn't faced anything that has slowed him, and Braden Montgomery could resume his steady climb after recovering from the foot fracture.
Or, perhaps they're just an anomalous roster full of fennec foxes -- cute in a weird way, and you can easily take them as pets as long as you can get them out of the desert. But if you get stuck in middle of the Sahara, they're going to outlast you with ease. The hope is that some of these skills will transfer and they'll be able to adapt to environments beyond the Southern League, while showing the rest of the system how to overcome weaknesses by maximizing strengths. In the event they just happen to be uniquely suited to the most desolate of environments, feel free to admire their tenacity from afar.
White Sox Minor Keys
Birmingham 6, Montgomery 3
- Rikuu Nishida went 1-for-4 with a walk, strikeout and two stolen bases.
- William Bergolla was 2-for-3 with two walks and a stolen base.
- Sam Antonacci doubled, singled twice and struck out twice.
- Ryan Galanie was 1-for-5.
- Hagen Smith: 4+ IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 5 BB, 6 K, 1 WP, 44 of 74 pitches for strikes.
Notes:
*Jordan Sprinkle delivered the big blow with a bases-clearing double that put the Barons up 5-0 in the top of the fifth.
*That's a wrap.
