Prospect Week at Sox Machine proceeds in an orderly fashion ... or so you're led to believe.
After opening with the White Sox prospects who just arrived in the system on Tuesday, we're moving on to the international signings who made their pro debuts in 2025, but are still at least years or levels away from being able to make more confident projections.
But just as you're getting lulled into a chronological timeline, you'll then be confronted with three White Sox prospects whose struggles have been protracted enough to jeopardize whatever status remains. We'd love to call this a daring narrative device that challenges the reader, so let's do that, because "this is a way to balance the word counts" doesn't have the same kind of juice.
Alejandro Cruz
With a $2 million bonus, Cruz was the headliner of the last international signing class Marco Paddy shaped, which gives him the doomed feel of a first-round pick by a since-fired front office. The protracted timelines behind international agreements mean the connection isn't quite that simple, but David Keller didn't go out of his way to attach his reputation to Cruz upon arrival, and then his first signing class involved zero players from Cuba. There may be nothing specifically wrong with Cruz, and while he made his pro debut at 18, he's certainly not the oldest Cuban to which the White Sox have devoted $2 million. Let's call him a product of an approach from which the White Sox have pivoted away, and leave it at that for now.
One season in, his performance hasn't yet distinguished him one way or another. He posted a .228/.396/.378 line over 48 games in the DSL, but he finished way better than he started, hitting .367/.500/.600 over with nine walks against just seven strikeouts over his final 50 plate appearances. The power hasn't emerged right away, but he stole 18 bases in 22 attempts while playing more second base than expected, so while he hasn't yet grown into his projected pop, the athleticism remains intact. – JM
Yobal Rodriguez
You can't really judge any prospect from his ERA, but that's especially the case with Rodriguez. He finished the year with a 2.97 ERA over 13 games and 30⅓ innings, but never resembled that sort of pitcher at any point.
He opened the season with 18 ⅔ scoreless innings, and then gave up all 21 of his runs over his final 11⅔. Only 10 of those runs were earned, but that's also the time he started walking guys in clumps, so whether classic DSL defense stressed Rodriguez, or Rodriguez stressed classic DSL defense is a matter for the courts to decide. If the better version of Rodriguez emerges in his stateside debut, it's because his changeup is advanced beyond his soon-to-be 18 years. – JM
Marcelo Alcala
Alcala snuck his way onto the back of the MLB Pipeline top-30 list last year and it’s not like it’s hard to see why. For one, the Sox system is not that deep, and also Alcala can hit the ball hard and moves pretty well, which is mostly what you’re looking for at the complex level. But after two years in the DSL and one in Arizona, he’s yet to put together a super-impressive season line because he strikes out so much. If a 64 percent contact rate is enough to scare teams off Munetaka Murakami despite endless NPB dingers, well that’s what Alcala did in the ACL last season, and his chase and in-zone contact rates make it clear that he’s fighting a two-front war.
Alcala played a lot of center field last year and has never posted a sub-.800 OPS, so by all means he deserves your attention if you have attention to give to longshot low minors guys, but I would hazard a guess that most dudes who have a 37.5 percent strikeout rate in the ACL don’t make the majors. – JF
Christian González
Contact rate is said to be the stickiest number from the low levels of the minors and González undeniably performed like a champ in that respect in 2025. He hit his way out of a second year in the DSL with an otherworldly .424/.553/.606 line in 22 games in the DR, before a .381/.435/.500 showing in 12 ACL games and accounts of further “singles machine” exploits in continued bridge league action before only turning 19 in September. An unheralded IFA signing who was inked a month after the 2024 signing day by the previous Sox international regime, any attention the Venezuelan outfielder has received was earned by his performance.
It’s true for anyone, but he’ll need to keep it up. González’s 5’11” listing is either generous, or his height is obscured by his stout, fire hydrant build that doesn’t suggest a ton of projection or much hope of manning center field. He has a stated goal to add power and he’ll need to, as even accounting for age, his 90th percentile exit velocities being equal to that of William Bergolla Jr. suggests well below-average power, and his 15-for-34 performance stealing bases has overwritten the initial reports selling a speedster. It’s easy to fall in love with a guy like this, who has scrapped his way from humble beginnings by refining the most difficult and captivating baseball skill, but it’s a difficult projection. -- JF
Frank Mieses
González’s season reminds that the highest honor a DSL player can receive is the right to leave it behind for good, but Mieses got league All-Star honors by compiling a .285/.410/.415 line in his professional debut and doesn’t turn 18 until next week. Maybe Chris Getz is holding his media availability to open spring camp on Feb. 9 just so he can publicly acknowledge the Dominican teenager’s birthday.
Whereas González mostly came onto the Sox Machine radar by showing up to bridge league and watching him hit, Sox people actively make a point to talk up Mieses’ frame and athleticism and the potential speed and power combo it could offer. He’ll need to overcome some quite clear hit tool issues (65 percent contact rate) to access it, but the same principles that make Alcala worth monitoring (hit the ball hard, move well) apply here.
Getting late early
Now, about those prospects who have reached crisis stages...
Jacob Gonzalez
Getting back to the idea of first-round picks of since-fired front offices, Gonzalez was the only prominent position-player prospect on the Birmingham roster to get promoted to Charlotte over the course of the 2025 season, but such is Gonzalez's stock that it can't exactly be seen as a compliment. While Gonzalez's .244/.305/.369 line with the Barons featured the team's highest ISO, the move was more because Gonzalez had played 183 games at Double-A by that point, and the ascendant Sam Antonacci was a better use of the infield reps at Regions Field. Any boost Gonzalez might have gotten from moving from one of Minor League Baseball's most punishing environments for hitters to the International League’s most notorious launching pad would be a bonus, and perhaps instructive when considering future promotions.
Except Gonzalez then went and hit just .204/.310/.293, making it a moot point. It wasn't just the lack of power that stood out at Charlotte, but his hit tool also failed him. He went the entire month of September without a multi-hit game; in fact, only one of his last 33 games qualified as such. It seems like somebody with his strikeout-to-walk ratio and bat-to-ball abilities should be at least able to hit for a decent average against minor league pitching, but if anything, his predilection for contact--especially with two strikes--ends up putting a lot of pitchers’ pitches into play without effect.
Then there's the defensive side of equation, which is narrowing on him as well. He opened the season in a time-share at shortstop with William Bergolla Jr., but Bergolla ended up taking ownership of the role at Double-A, and they're likely to be on the same roster next season. It looks like a utility profile at best from here on out. -- JM
Seth Keener
Keener’s plus slider was his carrying skill out of the draft, and despite the tendencies of guys who can really spin it, his changeup has performed pretty well since some tweaks the White Sox have made. It’s not to the point where he can throw it 40 percent of the time the way Keener uses – and may need to still increase the use of – his slider, but having average or better secondaries that move in both directions is quite the trick to pull off, and is important to remember before getting into the lost cause elements here.
Wake Forest produces a lot of pro pitchers, but their development engine is such that players that leave their campus still missing a necessary element might deserve more skepticism than others. True to form, Keener needed a tweak to his fastball to pull off the jump from collegiate swingman to pro starter the Sox envisioned, and it just hasn’t happened. Per Synergy, opposing hitters had a .388/.512/.651 slash line against Keener’s fastballs last year, and the resulting struggles saw him demoted to Kannapolis and returned to Winston-Salem as a reliever. He’s a more talented pitcher than a 6.01 career pro ERA suggests, he has far better control than a 11.8 percent walk rate indicates, but the fastball vulnerability just repeatedly breaks his ability to manage counts and operate in the strike zone.
A relief future where Keener throws a ton of secondaries seems like the path from here, but even that requires some sort of tweak or breakthrough (a cutter?) that I am nowhere near arrogant to say what it should be at this point. Smarter people have already tried. -- JF
Wilfred Veras
The longer Veras has been at Birmingham, the worse he's performed. 2025 marked his second full season and third with significant time at Double-A, and the results are slipping away:
- 2023: .309/.346/.533 over 162 PA
- 2024: .267/.319/.424 over 536 PA
- 2025: .215/.293/.327 over 464 PA
The only superficial positive about his 2025 performance was a 9.3 percent walk rate that was easily his career high, but lengthier plate appearances are at least in part downstream from a contact rate that's gone from worrisome (67 percent) to catastrophic (59 percent).
Veras had issues even at his peak prospect stock. His zone was a little too big and he hit too many grounders, which cast doubt on his ability to square up better pitching, and he was required to produce at the plate in order to overcome his stiff outfield play. The adjustments he's made just haven't helped, and the hamstring strains add injury to insult. – JM
