While we were at the Winter Meetings, Baseballs America and Prospectus dropped their top White Sox prospect lists, and although proverbially it takes three to set a trend, I have a hunch it's already been established by the first two sets of ordered prospects.
See if you can notice it:
| Baseball America | Rank | Baseball Prospectus |
|---|---|---|
| Noah Schultz | 1 | Caleb Bonemer |
| Caleb Bonemer | 2 | Billy Carlson |
| Braden Montgomery | 3 | Braden Montgomery |
| Hagen Smith | 4 | Noah Schultz |
| Billy Carlson | 5 | Hagen Smith |
| Tanner McDougal | 6 | Sam Antonacci |
| Jaden Fauske | 7 | Kyle Lodise |
| Christian Oppor | 8 | Jaden Fauske |
| Sam Antonacci | 9 | Tanner McDougal |
| Kyle Lodise | 10 | Christian Oppor |
To prevent a spoiler in case anybody has accidentally overscrolled past the table, here's a padding paragraph in which we note that HAGEN SMITH has some MEAN THIGHS, while SAM ANTONACCI underwent an ANATOMIC SCAN and CHRISTIAN OPPOR is a HIP CONSPIRATOR.
OK, now what do these lists have in common? They're the same 10 names shuffled in different orders, with the exception of Braden Montgomery, who apparently has "No. 3 White Sox prospect" written all over him.
After all of the other prominent White Sox prospects lists are unveiled over the winter -- FanGraphs is publishing its list in the next week, and we'll roll out ours to cap off the final week before spring training -- it'll be worth circling back to see the total number of prospects named even once. Last year's crop of top-10 lists captured about 20 different names, with a whole lot of variance after Schultz, Smith, Edgar Quero, Kyle Teel and the Montgomeries were accounted for.
Barring the addition of any notable prospects acquired by trade, such an exercise in 2026 could stop at, what, 12? The BA lists only runs 10 deep for now -- it'll eventually expand to 30 -- but the BP list goes through two dozen names, and inadvertently shows why it's OK to stop at 10 this time around. The next names are Blake Larson, Landon Hodge and Gage Ziehl, and you're free to draw a line of demarcation between each one.
My personal biases are certainly at play here, and an odd name or two is likely to enter the fray. Keith Law tends to bring outliers into the conversation since his evaluations aren't softened by committee, for instance, and FanGraphs arranges its list by Future Value grades, which can elevate reliever profiles in shallower systems.
But as we wend our way through rankings season, it seems like it'll be less interesting to compare the rankings, and more interesting to compare the individual reads on a player, because there are meaningful debates abound: whether Schultz can stay healthy enough, whether Smith can develop starter-level control, whether Braden Montgomery can shore up contact issues at higher levels, and on and on and on.
That's always the case for those who care enough about the minors, but full immersion in the debate requires several subscriptions, so it's understandable if you rely on rankings for shorthand. That just might less useful this year, but assuming you subscribe to Sox Machine, we'll do our best to keep you apprised on all the angles, and tell you the superior one before we're undermined by our own hubris.
