It's the last full week of true offseason before spring training begins, which means it's Prospect Week at Sox Machine. Between now and Sunday, James and I will be rifling through the White Sox farm system and writing up the present states of dozens of prospects before it all culminates in the unveiling our head-to-head top-10 lists.
We opened last year's Prospect Week with an open-ended question: The White Sox have prospects, but do they have a system? That is to say, the White Sox boasted a stout top-10 list, but every single prospect required a hefty acquisition price, be it a first-day draft pick or the trade of a very good major league player. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, but as we saw with the second Rick Hahn rebuild, it masked the White Sox's inability to generate prospects for themselves, and the lack of support eventually swelled into a sinkhole when Yoán Moncada, Eloy Jiménez & Friends weren't able to coalesce into a steady, functioning roster.
We can safely say one limitation remains in place. The White Sox are still trying to construct a pipeline with one arm tied behind their back because even if the new international system were fully up to speed, it'd still take years to see the results. As it stands, the White Sox don't have one of their international signings in the top 10, and it might be 15 or 20 names before you get to one. As long as one road remains closed off, the Sox aren't going to able to produce a top-five farm system with entirely homegrown products.
Still, it's encouraging that after a big wave of graduations -- Colson Montgomery, Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero, Grant Taylor, Chase Meidroth among them -- the cupboard isn't bare, and you're starting to see some less common sources of highly regarded talent. To use Baseball America's list again in order to not spoil our own:
- Noah Schultz -- First-round pick
- Caleb Bonemer -- Second-round pick
- Braden Montgomery -- Traded a good player
- Hagen Smith -- First-round pick
- Billy Carlson -- First-round pick
- Tanner McDougal -- Fifth-round pick
- Jaden Fauske -- Second-round pick
- Christian Oppor -- Fifth-round pick
- Sam Antonacci -- Fifth-round pick
- Kyle Lodise -- Third-round pick
You might not be able to draw safe conclusions from the rankings and draft rounds alone, because top-10 lists are required by law to have 10 names regardless of quality. The back half of the list can still merely be a grab bag of recent performances and remnant of draft pedigree, but without viable paths to major league impact.
That isn't the case here, because when you contextualize the list with things like Future Value grades or top-100 placements, you see a healthy amount of variance:
| BA | MLB | Law | ESPN |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schultz (26) | Montgomery (36) | Montgomery (30) | Bonemer (34) |
| Bonemer (27) | Schultz (49) | Bonemer (44) | Schultz (96) |
| Montgomery (73) | Bonemer (61) | Smith (58) | Carlson (100) |
| Smith (72) | Carlson (66) | ||
| Carlson (73) | Schultz (95) |
There's good variance, like Bonemer placing as high as No. 34 and Carlson occasionally ahead of guys who were drafted before him. There's also less flattering variance, like Noah Schultz's stock taking a hit, and, most notably, a 159-spot spread between Montgomery's highest and lowest ranking. In both cases, the upside is visible despite shortcomings, documented or suspected, and that extends to Tanner McDougal and Christian Oppor, both of whom could make very easy top-100 cases if they're able to pick up where they left off.
That still leaves a puzzle for player development to solve, but at least the department is being given better raw materials to work with, which stands in contrast to the days of drafting less athletic college performers and hoping the polish means less work for the organization. When somebody like Bonemer hits the ground hitting, he's rewarded with status. It also makes turbulence more forgivable. Schultz can miss most of one year and look off his game for another, and he's still top-100 because where is any team going to find its next 6-foot-10-inch lefty who can throw hard and throw strikes?
With a No. 1 overall draft pick and a preseason consensus 1-1 player in the forecast five months from now, the White Sox farm system is going to get a jolt at this time next year. But the heavy graduation rate over the course of the previous season and the understandable excitement for the upcoming draft class, this could have very well been a gap year for the White Sox farm system, and that's one area where the team avoided complacency.
