White Sox catcher Edgar Quero does not easily cough up a positive self-assessment, at least not of his 2025 rookie season.
"I feel pretty good for it to be my first year," Quero said, speaking on the phone from Arizona, where he's spent the offseason training largely at the team complex. "Everybody knows I can do more."
While finishing 21st in Baseball Reference's wins above replacement metric among rookies with 1.2 WAR sounds like a finish that could earn a mixed review from a former top-100 prospect, Roman Anthony was the only player above him in the bWAR standings younger than the 22-year-old Quero. He's just disinclined to grade himself on a curve.
Even a gimme like bringing up Quero's right-handed swing, with which the switch-hitter slashed .357/.394/.457 against major league lefties last year, quickly gets placed within the framework of something that can be improved.
"The numbers say that I was pretty good, but I didn't feel comfortable," Quero said.
So if he's not up for doing it, there are some clear ways that Quero held his own as a rookie sitting in his statistical record. His .268/.333/.356 batting line was near league-average work (95 wRC+) from a traditionally offense-starved position, and was backed by actually better contact (81.9 percent) and chase (21.7 percent O-swing) rates against big league pitching than Quero had shown in the minors the year before. Defensively, his pitch-blocking similarly graded out as perfectly average per Statcast, and Quero didn't concede a passed ball all season. His pop times (1.95 seconds) were also league average, and though his 15.9 percent caught stealing rate was solidly below, Quero's five pickoffs were tied for the league lead among catchers, with all those third base backpicks being a perfect microcosm for how his precocious observational skills affect games.
The league is aware of these strengths. Sources differ on how much the White Sox were actively surveying the trade market to assess Quero's value, or simply listening to offers from it as they ponder the future of their surplus of starting-caliber young catching with Quero and Kyle Teel. But the trade chatter, which ultimately included Teel as well with the bizarre case of the Red Sox asking about getting him back, has certainly been loud enough for Quero to hear about it, as much as he might try to avoid it.
"I don't pay too much attention to that, because I'm not going to make any decisions on that," said Quero, positing that he and Teel aren't barriers to each other becoming everyday players. "[He and Teel are] not thinking about that either. We try to get better everyday, try to help the team, trying to be in the lineup at the same time no matter what. Whether one is DH, or one is catching, it doesn't matter. Our goal is to be in the lineup everyday, trying to help the team."
Some Sox officials privately feel that trading Quero at his current value could quickly look foolish, if only because his makeup is good enough that he's bound keep improving, even if pinning down his ceiling is difficult. Accordingly, pinning down what Quero thinks about himself as a player is best done in reverse, because he centers the discussion on where he thinks there are gaps to fill.
"Trying to get better at my framing was a big part of my offseason," Quero said. "Because last year was a little trouble for me trying to get under the ball. So right now, I think I'm pretty good. I feel pretty good and I'm working on that."
Quero rated at the bottom of the league in pitch-framing last season, particularly struggling to steal called strikes below the zone and to his glove side. As a smaller catcher, Quero can struggle to create space for his glove to move up through the zone while receiving the ball. So in addition to preparing to work with bench coach Walker McKinven this coming season, Quero has been in touch with a private catching instructor named Todd Coburn this winter -- who straightforwardly markets himself on social media as The Catching Guy -- and was planning to begin a new slate of work sessions with Coburn this week.
For a young hitter with well-demonstrated contact ability and pitch selection, chasing more power can sometimes threaten what Quero already does well. But despite being 22, he looks at his five home runs last year as an aberration in his established track record of actualizing in-game power -- since he hit 17 bombs in 2022 and 16 in just 98 games in 2024.
"I need to hit the ball in the gap, I need homers, because that's me," Quero said. "If you check my numbers in the minor leagues, you can see the difference."
Will Venable spent much of last season harping upon the White Sox needing to be better prepared to drive fastballs, and Quero sees his personal mission similarly. Despite a low 17.6 percent strikeout rate, he whiffed on an above-average amount of in-zone fastballs, and sees the mechanical fix that will lead to more power as something fundamental to his overall timing.
"I was moving too much back," said Quero, describing the hip load in his swing. "So when I go to attack the ball, it was a little late, sometimes I was around the ball. So this year, I've been focused on that. I'm trying to get in the same spot when I when I load. When I go into the ball to attack, now I'm thinking, I'm going to do more damage, because I'm more consistent to the ball."
Quero made repeated references to working to get stronger in his offseason lifting work at Camelback Ranch. It's just less with a mind of searching for more exit velocity, and more vested in the idea that more core stability will allow him to load into his back hip with a smaller and more consistent move, better enabling him to be on time with velocity and catching balls out front. Because when Quero talks about hitting for more power, he ties it to hitting the ball in the air more. He had a 50-percent ground-ball rate last year with the White Sox, but ran rates in the low-40s in Low-A in 2022 and in the Double-A portion of his 2024 season, and those are the stretches in Quero's career where he hit like a future star.
Despite his young age, Quero's defining characteristic as a prospect has been how advanced his understanding of the game is; be it in his plate approach or his feel for setting targets and calling games tailored to his pitchers, which was internally lauded more than his defensive numbers would show. In keeping with that, he sees hitting for the kind of power that would make him an impact player not as a long-term project, but a back to normal switch he's trying to flip through an offseason of focused work.
So in the same vein, when he's still at the complex a month from now as spring training opens, Quero wants to set high expectations for the White Sox as well.
"Hopefully all the young guys have the same mentality that I have right now," Quero said. "My goal for this year is to play well and try to make the playoffs. Try to make the playoffs. We're ready, man, if everybody comes with the mentality that we can make it, because we have a really good team. We showed it last year in the second half, we can hit. I think Chris Getz, he's doing a pretty good job this offseason of trying to find a couple guys who can help the bullpen, a couple of guys to help on the team too that we needed, and I think we have a really good team."
