If Colson Montgomery's season went according to how the White Sox originally drew it up, he might've been able to earn the team an extra draft pick with a top-three performance in Rookie of the Year voting.
As it actually unfolded with the spring training setback, the disastrous start at Triple-A, the vision quest in the desert, and then the resurgent half-season in the big leagues, he had to settle for a distant fifth.
Nick Kurtz won the American League Rookie of the Year in unanimous fashion, and runner-up Jacob Wilson gave the Athletics the first 1-2 finish by AL teammates since Alvin Davis and Mark Langston for the Mariners in 1984. Montgomery also finished behind Roman Anthony and Noah Cameron, with all non-winners receiving at least one second-place vote. That scans as fair:
| Player | fWAR | bWAR | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kurtz | 4.6 | 5.4 | 210 |
| Wilson | 3.5 | 3.0 | 107 |
| Anthony | 2.7 | 3.1 | 72 |
| Cameron | 1.8 | 3.8 | 54 |
| Montgomery | 2.7 | 3.3 | 23 |
Cameron gets dinged by fWAR for a FIP (4.18) that doesn't match his ERA (2.99), but given that he didn't allow a single unearned run over 138⅓ innings, it's not like he goosed up the traditional Cy Young stats in a flimsy fashion.
The Montgomery-Anthony comparison is the fun one, if only because they rode two different sorts of offensive profiles to similar value over a similar amount of playing time.
- Montgomery: .239/.311/.529, 129 wRC+, 8.8% BB, 29.2% K over 284 PA
- Anthony: .292/.396/.463, 140 wRC+, 13.2% BB, 27.7% K over 303 PA
It's a little easier to see Anthony holding his value going forward, but if Montgomery turns in a full season of above-average shortstop defense after metrics looked favorably upon his initial body of work, priors will have to be updated. This finish could've stoked a lot more controversy were there a White Sox PPI pick riding on the outcome, but Montgomery wasn't eligible since he joined the team midseason, so it's just a neat little subplot to follow into next season.
Shane Smith was the other White Sox rookie represented, picking up one fourth-place vote. It was from the same voter who placed Montgomery second, and it was from the Seattle contingent, not Chicago.
Overall, it was a pretty deep pool of productive rookies, as evidenced by the fact that MLB Pipeline's All-Rookie Team had to slot Montgomery at DH. Smith, Mike Vasil, Chase Meidroth and Kyle Teel all made the second team, with Teel also slotted at DH because National League Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin and AL sixth-place finisher Carlos Narváez boxed him out behind the plate.
Former White Sox coaches find work elsewhere
The White Sox took a member of the Royals' staff by hiring Zach Bove to be their pitching coach, but Kansas City returned the favor on Monday by adding Marcus Thames to be part of their three-man staff of hitting coaches that’s headed up by Alec Zumwalt, according to a report from MLB.com's Anne Rogers.
The Royals will be Thames' fifth team in nine seasons, and fourth over the last five, which speaks to both his personal pull and his teams' lack of results. He's overseen a bottom-10 offense in each of the last five seasons, but in the case of the Marlins and Angels, those teams continued to have bottom-10 units over the two years that followed Thames' departure, so there's no evidence there he was leaving much unfulfilled potential on the table.
The White Sox are hoping their second-half upswing will allow them to graduate to the middle tier next season, while the 2026 Royals will give Thames a different formula to work with. Instead of directing a lineup full of hitters trying to tread water, he'll join a team with four proven bats and a whole host of lost souls, and will no longer be No. 1 on the call sheet for targets to blame if/when the offense sputters.
Thames isn't the only dismissed coach to find a new home, as former White Sox first base coach Jason Bourgeois will hold the same role for Craig Albernaz's new staff in Baltimore. The White Sox have not yet named his replacement, nor specified whether that coach will also be expected to handle baserunning and outfield instruction. I'll most remember Bourgeois for showing up a minute late to the field in the eighth inning of a blowout loss because Pedro Grifol said he was "knee-deep into positioning," a regrettable combination of words that was quickly overshadowed by his response to a literal eclipse.
