Over the first four installments of Prospect Week, we've written up 39 White Sox prospects who either just arrived, have short or troubling track records that can't support confident forecasts, exceeded expectations in 2025, or suffered an injury that threw them off track.
But a bulk of prospect cases aren't so neatly categorizable, which is why the final installment is the biggest tent: White Sox prospects who are faring OK at present, but have one big obstacle to overcome, gap to close, or question to answer before they can fulfill their major league potential. Twenty-one such prospects fit that description, so none of them are walking alone.
That brings us up to 60 players covered over the course of Prospect Week, and now we have to round it down. On Sunday, we'll present our top 10 White Sox prospect lists exclusively for Sox Machine subscribers. Sign up today if you haven't.
Hagen Smith: Control
It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish, or so Smith hopes. He’d barely pitched a month in Birmingham before the combination of control problems and flagging velocity (and elbow discomfort) led the White Sox to take him out of circulation for the next seven weeks. It didn’t quite replicate the stirring turnaround Colson Montgomery experienced, but after building his way back up, Smith did start completing five innings with some regularity with the Barons, and later threw an above-average amount of strikes relative to the competition in the Arizona Fall League.
Opponents batted just .166/.332/.285 against him, which is the cleanest single statistical representation of his strengths and weaknesses. Nobody can hit him, but partially because he doesn’t allow himself to be hit. When he’s on, his fastball-slider combination is versatile enough against both righties and lefties that a third pitch — currently a split change — seems like a vanity project. Then he loses the zone for batters at a time, gives up a couple runs on one well-placed hit, and his pitch count already has the bullpen ready to take over.
The quality of the stuff is MLB-caliber, but the control and command aren’t, and if a big gap remains between the two, the White Sox have some choices to make in bridging the divide. That might involve running him out in big league games and letting him viscerally experience consequences that Triple-A hitters can’t impose. White Sox fans have seen this sort of thing before with Carlos Rodón and Dylan Cease, but they threw more strikes on the way up, so those are comparisons that can’t yet be casually made. – JM
Jedixson Paez: Rule 5 life
The reports on Páez read like a more precocious version of Mason Adams; a 6-foot-1-inch righty with below-average velocity but an advanced feel for throwing strikes no matter how many pitches he’s added. He’s walked just 3.8 percent of the batters he’s faced over his four years in professional baseball. The catch is that only 83 of those batters were above Low-A, as a calf injury limited him to just seven games and 19 ⅓ innings for High-A Greenville in the Boston Red Sox system. They were 19⅓ good innings, to be clear (23 strikeouts against 22 baserunners), but it would be premature to say he conquered the South Atlantic League, and then there are still two minor league levels above that.
By selecting him with the second pick in the Rule 5 draft, the White Sox are asking him to close that gap at once. There’s a chance Páez can do it. He’d probably be relegated to long relief and garbage time, and he might be efficient enough to throw two or three innings that make him useful for getting a game over with, no matter how much his ERA suffers. Add an injury, real or imagined, that allows him to only be active for 90 days, and there’s a viable path. But since the Sox drafted both him and Alexander Alberto via Rule 5 at the Winter Meetings, they’ve added at least two major league relievers to the bullpen, and maybe even three, so if Páez looks overmatched by major league hitters in short order, there could be far less flexibility for adding fresh arms from the minors to help hide him. – JM
Alexander Alberto: Rule 5 life
Alberto will fall down on the mound sometimes. It’s a combination of the force he’s throwing with (96-99 mph, t100) and the physical contortions that a lanky six-foot-eight righty doing some version of a drop-and-drive delivery requires. He’s truthfully made big strides in simplifying and compacting the operation over the last 12 months, producing genuinely overpowering results (48 2/3 IP, 2.59 ERA, 30.6 percent strikeout rate, 10 percent walk rate) across two levels of A-ball in 2025. It's just that his visually overwhelming stuff wasn’t actually overwhelming A-ball hitters until Alberto was more than old enough to buy them some conciliatory beers after the game, which adds some uncertainty to projecting he can quickly make the jump to tackling big leaguers. This used to be what Rule 5 picks were; finding a big galoot who threw gas but in uncertain directions and hoping that barking some new variety of coaching words at them “Stay closed!” “Stay on your back leg!” “Throw strikes! Please!” would trigger a Matt Thornton-level instantaneous moment of mechanical clarity during a spring bullpen session. A pitch data-heavy reboot of that route as the second of two Rule 5 picks seemed like an appropriate level of nostalgia.
It just also felt like a more necessary route to adding some high variance but high octane stuff to the Sox pen, before they added $20 million worth of Jordan Hicks and Seranthony Dominguez to the fold. Now it feels more like a backup plan. – JF
David Sandlin: Durability
Sandlin was ranked somewhere between the No. 9 and No. 15 prospect in the Red Sox system, but that number will play up with the White Sox, given that they went so far out of their way to acquire him by taking on most of Jordan Hicks’ contract. There’s reason for enthusiasm, as Sandlin found a groove as a starter in Double-A Portland before he was promoted to Triple-A Worcester and slotted into a relief role. Whether it was more an attempt to draw down on what was easily a career-high workload or prepare him for a potential cameo in the big league bullpen, the move didn’t agree with him. All his peripherals went in the wrong direction, resulting in a 7.61 ERA over 15 appearances and 23⅔ innings that was more or less earned.
Chris Getz touted an arsenal that carries the potential for “mid-rotation, if not better” stuff, and so Sandlin will get the opportunity to start from the get-go, including a chance to win one of the contested White Sox rotation spots. He’ll have to get a handle on lefties, who seemed to see his three-quarter-slot fastball just fine, and hit .285/.342/.430 off him as a result. He’s gone the cutter route, and there’s been a changeup/splitter in his past that maybe the White Sox will revisit, because he needs something to get opposite-handed hitters off his scent. – JM
Duncan Davitt: Lefties
Sportswriters are drawn to athletes who are relatable, and nobody is more relatable to sportswriters than Davitt, who moonlights as one for his hometown newspaper in Iowa during the offseason. Should he ever attain staying power in the majors, this fact is likely to spur a number of national write-ups that outpace his production no matter how well he fares.
First things first, he needs to get the majors. Davitt got one step closer with an addition to the 40-man roster this winter, and now he’ll need to better handle Triple-A hitters, lefties in particular. He’s a natural supinator who can throw three breaking balls to make life difficult for righties, but he’s vulnerable to lefties, with his rising walk rate reflecting discomfort against them. He added a cutter last year to better get inside on them, and Davitt’s TikTok shows a kick change in development this time around. That, and improving his ability to hold his velocity over the course of a long season will determine whether he’ll get a chance to hold down a rotation spot, or whether he’s relegated to the itinerant up-and-down long-relief/spot starter lifestyle. – JM
Tyler Schweitzer: Charlotte
Birmingham is one of the toughest environments for instant offense in the Double-A, while Charlotte is the by far the freakiest home run haven in all of Triple-A, and nobody felt the give and take more acutely than Schweitzer, who came one out short in Double-A from a perfectly divided 100-inning Jekyll-and-Hyde-assed sample:
- Birmingham: 49.2 IP, 32 H, 0 HR, 15 BB, 42 K, 1.27 ERA
- Charlotte: 50 IP, 61 H, 13 H, 26 BB, 39 K, 7.92 ERA
It defies explanation why Schweitzer suffered to the extent that he did, because he has all the classic ingredients of your standard depth lefty: average velocity and average secondaries, but strike-throwing ability with all of them. He’s negotiated mild platoon split concerns throughout his career, but he allowed 12 of his 13 homers to righties this time around, so maybe the combination of a tight ballpark and reduced four-seam carry with the major league baseball is why his game caved in to such a spectacular degree? Assuming he doesn’t have PTSD at Truist Field, he should get a chance to try again, with a lefty-oriented reliever role closer to the front of mind. – JM
Tanner Murray: Plate discipline
Acquired by the White Sox on Rule 5 protection deadline day from the Tampa Bay Rays alongside Everson Pereira in the Yoendrys Gomez-Steven Wilson trade, Murray suddenly discovered how to hit homers last year. He belted 18 over 137 games for Triple-A Durham, which nearly tripled his career high of seven that he set the year before. The catch is that his plate discipline eroded on him. He hit .241/.299/.400 with 138 strikeouts over 572 plate appearances, and the 24.1 percent strikeout rate represented an eight-point increase over the previous season. Murray swung harder and chased more.
It’s not pretty, but it could be a fair trade-off. For one, Murray is capable of covering second, third and short on a given day. Another thing that might make his numbers a little worse than they appear is the fact that only 107 of those 572 PA came against lefties, which is both a notably low percentage even for an everyday player, and something that would spike even higher when deployed in a reserve role. He had the typical gains in discipline and power (.231/.330/.440) with the platoon advantage, so there’s a future where he goes between Charlotte and Chicago over the course of his three option years and is capable of hot streaks when facing a favorable slate of pitchers. Every generation gets the Danny Mendick it deserves, and since Mendick is a manager in the Rays farm system now, Murray could simply represent fair compensation. – JM
Riley Gowens: Projectability
That every other member of the five-player return for Aaron Bummer is already out of the organization, all after unmemorable stints, save for Riley Gowens, is usually a reliable punchline. Because Gowens is a ninth-round pick who had a 5.69 ERA in three seasons at Illinois, and when he joined the White Sox org, he was a 24-year-old set to start in High-A.
He’s uh, absolutely carved since then? Back to back seasons of 120+ innings, ERAs in the mid-3.00s, good peripherals (27-28 percent strikeout rate, nine percent walks), two Southern League championship rings. It’s just sort of hard to pin down exactly how he’s doing it other than he’s 26 now and being able to rent a car on his own is some kind of massive strategic advantage. Gowens bullies the opposition with a 92-94 mph four-seamers that Double-A hitters. The pitch has good carry and he commands it well, but also opposing hitters chase it up and out of the zone like their water cooler has been spiked with neurotoxins. Like many great innings eaters, Gowens is a certified big ol’ boy (6’4”, 225 pounds) and Brian Bannister has a whole theory about how burly pitchers hide the ball better, but a lot of watching Gowens provokes the reaction of “this is the damnedest thing,” rather than “this is the most projectable thing.”
Luckily the current CBA precludes teams from staring at a prospect in confusion for an indefinite period of time, and Gowens being Rule 5 eligible in December should provide some impetus for the Sox to test out what his deal is. – JF
William Bergolla: Power
How many balls did Bergolla to the wall last year? I already did the research so I won’t wait for an answer.
Two, the answer is two. Not balls over the wall obviously, because he hasn’t homered since joining the White Sox organization in a 2024 deadline trade for Tanner Banks. We’re not being strict about it hitting off the wall on a fly, either. Just any drive where a reasonable person would say “Bergolla hit one to the wall.” He did it twice at Double-A Birmingham in 551 plate appearances, and has a .345 career professional slugging percentage.
If not for this shortcoming, Bergolla is…easily a top-100 prospect? His throwing arm is underwhelming for shortstop, but for now and probably the next few years, he can get by as one of those guys who makes every throw running in the direction of its intended base, because his hands and footwork are reliable enough to regularly get himself in the best position. Of course, it’s not like Bergolla’s power is a missing person and the FBI has put up posters. He’s both Jacob Amaya-sized and his wristy swing is geared for maximum contact, and he’s been rewarded with the third-lowest swinging strike rate in the minors last year. The true effect of Truist Field on power is really going to be put to the test by Bergolla in the most unusual way.
The extreme nature of Bergolla’s offensive game allows you to craft sentences that make him sound extremely cool and also very unlikely to ever hit enough to be a regular, while being perfectly accurate either way. For example, Chase Meidroth hits the ball significantly harder than Bergolla. Also, Bergolla’s exit velocities, contact rate and hard-hit rates aren’t super distinguishable from Luis Arraez when he was a prospect. See? Now you don’t know what to think. – JF
Rikuu Nishida: Power
Back before Major League Baseball expanded to California, players who weren’t quite MLB caliber could make a nice living in the Pacific Coast League, earning a competitive salary and obtaining regional celebrity status for posting big numbers and contributing to victories in the only local viewable games that mattered. It’s not hard to picture a guy like Nishida thriving for the San Francisco Seals, scoring 100 runs a year and becoming a fan favorite for a crowd that could expect him to return the following season.
Alas, every prospect in affiliated ball being first and foremost gauged for his major league potential extracts a lot of joy out of watching Nishida. His game absolutely works in the Southern League, where he’s posted a .403 on-base percentage, despite a .310 slugging percentage, by seeing the batter’s box and basepaths as canvases for his artistic expression, and he cuts down a surprising amount of runners with an accurate arm from left field. It’s nearly impossible to imagine it succeeding in the majors, because well-executed Double-A pitching puts him in precarious positions, so major league pitching could very well break bats and snap ligaments.
After earning two championship rings with the Barons, it’s probably time to test whether Triple-A pitching and defenses are polished enough to neutralize his aggression and shatter the illusion. Everybody should want this assessment to be wrong. — JM
Ryan Galanie: Power
It’s Sox Machine canon that the threshold for an aesthetically pleasing RBI-to-HR ratio is roughly 3.5:1, at least assuming the RBI total itself is considerable. A 30-homer, 100 RBI season is pretty in a way a 40-homer, 100-RBI season is not. If a guy drove in 100 runs without even reaching 20 homers, chances are high that a lot of telegenic baserunning action was involved.
Galanie and the Birmingham Barons took this to extremes. He finished the year with 94 RBIs on just 11 homers, including a 10-to-1 ratio for his Double-A work alone (seven homers, 71 RBIs). He usually came to the plate with Bergolla, Nishida and/or Sam Antonacci on base, and it was his job to convert them into runs. His .266/.320/.386 line isn’t impressive for a first baseman, but it just involved so much situational hitting, including 10 sac flies in only 98 games. He probably could have reached triple digits in RBIs with perfect health, but he suffered a facial injury on a pickoff throw on Aug. 9 that knocked him out of action for three weeks. He came back wearing a protective mask in the field, and the rest of his season wasn’t nearly as impactful.
Galanie went on to play in the Arizona Fall League. Free of both the unfriendly power environment at Regions Field and the Barons’ proclivity for manufacturing runs, the hope was that he’d be able to show some thump that wasn’t worth selling out for in Birmingham. Instead he hit just .212/.362/.231 in the desert, including one double over 69 plate appearances. He’s more of an all-fields hitter than somebody who is regularly able to access his pull power, and while that profile works at a bunch of positions, first base isn’t one of them. He’s pretty athletic there, but it hasn’t yet inspired auditions at other positions, save a handful of games at left field and third base.
Galanie’s AFL teammate Caden Connor is in a similar boat, as he’s 25 and limited to corner play while only hitting 14 homers over 256 professional games. Connor has been able to make the shift to the outfield, he’s left-handed, and he’s coming off a strong stint with the Desert Dogs, so he might have more going for him at this point. – JM
Jeral Perez: Build
Perez is only 21 but has already mastered actualizing his power in games. The man is an absolute pulling and lifting machine. Just before he was part of the Erick Fedde-Michael Kopech-Tommy Pham trade, the Dodgers had him crowd the plate and turn his front foot inward, just so he could turn-and-burn on a bigger portion of the strike zone. If Braden Montgomery gets as good as tapping into pull power as Perez he might become prime Jose Bautista.
The rub is that Perez is built like Yolmer Sanchez. It’s kind of amazing that even trying to launch the ball out to left as relentlessly as he does produced 22 homers given his 40-grade juice, and his final line in Winston-Salem reads as if he’s made a sort of Faustian bargain: .244/.315/.448. He doesn’t defend well enough that any offense is a bonus, but can handle second base and bring some flair to it. There’s some meat on the bone with his plate approach that Perez is still young enough to make gains with. But being a pint-size power hitter is less a sticking point with Perez than a life he’s enthusiastically chosen, limitations and all. – JF
Samuel Zavala: Power
Quiet as kept, Zavala hit .286/.396/.398 after June 1 last year. This is a cooler narrative device to pull out when trying to isolate for Miguel Vargas’ performance in the majors after a mechanical tweak than trying to make a 21-year-old repeating High-A look good, but Zavala has made his own adjustments to tamp down the “little man, big swing” elements of his game, as much as he can. The bummer with discussing Zavala is that every point to hit on for why he’s a legitimately talented prospect inevitably dovetails with why it’s probably not going to work out. He’s an impressively polished outfielder with crisp routes and is relaxed even while on the run, but he’s also just has average speed, so banking on him providing value as a glove-first centerfielder is mostly signing up to watch the limits of how far good fundamentals can carry a player. Offensively he does not chase outside of the zone, to a degree that is still a little too passive to have much confidence that he can replicate his sky-high walk rates at upper levels, but the bigger issue is that he whiffs on a lot of fastballs above the belt still and high-level pitchers will just challenge him in the zone. Any outlet that uses max exit velocity as a dogmatic way to grade raw power might be tricked into projecting him for above-average pop, but his best swings are when he’s a bit more controlled, and well, do you watch this skinny guy whose swing looks like his bat is a little too heavy, and has a .323 career slug in High-A and think that he has above-average raw power?
Zavala is still just 21, is a big defensive positive in the corners and takes competent at-bats. His path to offensive impact is rocky, but it’s nice to have a lot of guys like this in the system who might mature into useful role players, especially if the acquisition cost isn’t too–/checks notes–aw dang. – JF
George Wolkow: Contact
Personable, passionate, unfailingly accountable and built like Paul Bunyan started doing keto, no one offering you skepticism on Wolkow’s outlook wants to do it. Both personally and for the business outlook of Sox Machine, it would be nice if the White Sox had a charismatic yeti-sized outfielder who regularly womped balls onto the Dan Ryan–or realistically since he’s a left-hander, just to Wentworth Gardens–and then gave exquisitely detailed insights into how he did it afterward. This new thing where he’s capable of stealing 30 bases? Yeah, we could fit that in too.
Wolkow reclassified to start his pro career early, anticipating the necessity of a slow burn development process. But after two seasons in Kannapolis, with meaningful contact and chase improvements but also worse surface results (.223/.317/.362 last year) the second time through, the data is really suggesting that Wolkow cannot track spin (46 percent miss rate), and to a degree that might not be reconciled. Being patient with the guy with 80 grade raw power is as wise as being patient with the dude who can throw 100 mph, but this was always going to be a difficult plane to land. – JF
Mathias LaCombe: Départ différé
Everyone loves the prospect who has a cool French spy name, a cool French spy pencil mustache and even kind of an on-theme origin story. A French national pitching at an Arizona junior college for some reason? Sounds like a spy cover. A collective thirst for a novel origin story and the White Sox to develop the first French native big leaguer ever has likely contributed to a rosier view of LaCombe’s prospect status than a 23-year-old who didn’t throw many strikes in Low-A would typically draw. The lat injury that has sidelined LaCombe for most of his time in the White Sox organization since being drafted in 2023 and his unique origin story are concrete reasons to buy him as a late bloomer, but his lower half actions are stiffer than the typical big leaguer and it seems doubtful that precision will ever be his game. Luckily he’s genuinely pretty nasty, sitting mid-90s with plenty of horizontal action on all his pitches, and plenty of sinker-slider relievers have emerged from shakier control origins.
It would be a waste if the first viable French prospect was some sort of Caleb Bonhomme type who commanded significant attention solely for on-field value. Now there’s a reason to care about someone who faces a bit of a climb. – JF
Reliever roundup
Zach Franklin, Tyler Davis, Ben Peoples and Adisyn Coffey were invited to spring training, and since all are on the doorstep of the majors, all it takes is a hot stretch and fortuitous timing to get the call. Carson Jacobs struck out 80 batters over 54 ⅔ innings, most of them coming at Winston-Salem. His 6-foot-9-inch frame generates some of the nastier swing-and-miss numbers in the system with multiple pitches, and the White Sox thought enough of him to send him to the AFL, but strike-throwing can still elude him. – JM
