When last year's first-round pick Billy Carlson opens the minor league season at Low-A Kannapolis, second-round pick Jaden Fauske will be with him. They're quite different players; Carlson makes defensive plays that remind White Sox farm director Paul Janish of Bobby Witt Jr., whereas he says Fauske is "further down the road" than most 19-year-olds "in terms of approach and controlling the zone."
But both are regarded as having the physical and mental maturity to handle a full-season workload and navigate the challenges of struggling and making adjustments that come in pro ball.
"Some of [Carlson's] moves have shortened up a little bit and they're going to have to; adjusting to the consistency of the pitching that he's never seen before is going to be part of the process," Janish said. "It does seem evident that even if he is going to struggle offensively, he's going to have the ability to separate the offense from the defense and give you what he's got."
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As anticipated in February, some of the team's Triple-A rotation logjam is figuring itself out in the traditional way. Janish is hopeful that it's "just a speed bump," but back and subsequent elbow discomfort has slowed David Sandlin's spring ramp-up, keeping him from getting into a Cactus League game before he was reassigned to minor league camp, and likely delaying his start to the season.
More by design, Hagen Smith's staggered open to spring has him throwing two innings less than two weeks before the Charlotte Knights' season opens, so he'll be on shorter outings to start the year with the idea that it will allow him to sprint through the finish line in Chicago. But the other top-100 prospects making starts in Triple-A -- Noah Schultz and Tanner McDougal -- should be full-go from the get-go.
"Obviously we'll use the context of the season, their stuff and recovery to keep an eye on things, but our goal would be for those guys to be operating pretty much normally," Janish said.
With a group that should include Duncan Davitt and Jonathan Cannon, there are still trickle-down effects from the crowding. Riley Gowens, the sole survivor of the 2023 Aaron Bummer trade, is 26 and only throws around 92-94 mph, but now has over 180 innings of track record showing he can still blow it by Double-A hitters (27.4 percent strikeout rate). Major league roster needs often force career starters into bulk roles, and with Gowens, it could simply happen before he reaches Chicago.
"First of all, I just have to give him a ton of credit, he's as tough as anybody that we have and just freaking works his butt off," Janish said. "There is consideration for how to get him over the hump of getting to Triple-A and getting on the major league radar, and if that does mean transitioning to more of a bulk role and giving him the opportunity to hopefully have this stuff pick up maybe just a little bit, just because they're shorter stints, right? He's a little bit of a Swiss Army knife, which, as we've seen with guys this past year, that's a really valuable tool."
How soon Gowens gets over that hump could play some role in whether Christian Oppor returns to High-A to start the season, where he threw 65⅓ innings last year, or begins the season in Double-A Birmingham outright. Either way, the Sox would love to see Oppor mirror McDougal's 2025 season in multiple ways. First is that bumping Oppor up incrementally from the 87⅔ innings he logged last year to something in the territory of McDougal's 120⅓ innings (when including playoffs) could take a similar look, with shortened outings at the end of his season. Second is that McDougal's dominance in Double-A put him in line where the Sox expect him to reach the majors this season, and they'd like to see Oppor in the same spot this time next year.
Continuing the theme of modeling White Sox prospect plans off previous examples, Janish agreed a fair goal for French-born right-hander Mathias LaCombe -- who covered 53⅓ innings last season between the complex and Kannapolis after missing the previous year with a lat injury -- is a workload in the territory of Oppor's 2025 season.
"He's one of the ones for me where I really feel good about the arrow pointing in the right direction," said Janish, who described LaCombe similarly to Oppor in terms of taking more ownership of his arm care routine. "When you watch the body language on the mound, I think the word is embarrass -- he really wants to embarrass guys. He wants to win. I'm excited about Mathias. Obviously we need to be diligent about keeping him healthy, but he's one I'd point to where, I don't think comeback player is the way to say it, but someone who could have a really good year."
Could we continue this all the way down the line and have LaCombe's 2025 season be a model for former second-round pick (via the Gregory Santos trade), 20-year-old left-hander Blake Larson, who missed last year recovering from Tommy John surgery? The double whammy that Larson hasn't pitched in pro ball before and recently faced live hitters for the first time since surgery makes it hard to project his workload with any certainty, but he's expected to pitch in Kannapolis this year.
"There's probably going to be some ups and downs in terms of just how he recovers and feels, based on doing things for the first time in a long period of time after surgery, and his movement profile is so unique in regards to the arsenal, it's reasonable to believe he's going to have to make some adjustments as he's going," Janish said. "Blake will tell you this too, that as much as having surgery sucked, the one positive is the physical development he was able to accomplish. I think that's going to pay itself forward."
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Minor league hitting coordinator Sherman Johnson cited Sam Antonacci as one of the early beneficiaries of the emphasis on bat speed training this spring in White Sox camp, so between his AFL dominance, WBC exploits and Cactus League power, it's pretty safe to peg him for starting the season in Charlotte.
"If he's not in Chicago," Janish said with a laugh.
It's one of the central questions of his prospect profile, but second base is the closest thing Antonacci has had to a primary position, with third base coming in, well, second place. While he may be hitting like more than a utility type, the White Sox still see Antonacci as someone who will move around to get his bat in the lineup.
"It's going to be under consideration to start working him more consistently in the outfield with the understanding if you're talking about optimizing a lineup on a given night, it might be best to have him playing an outfield position," Janish said. "Being on the dirt is probably where he's going to best 'fit,' but I don't have any qualms with him going to the outfield and doing a good job, just knowing the baseball IQ and the effort he's going to put into it."
Caleb Bonemer is still playing a fair amount of shortstop this spring and is expected to continue mixing in there throughout the year, but already had a bulkier power-hitting build for the position and is estimated to have put on 15 pounds over the offseason.
"He doesn't look jacked, he is jacked," Janish said. "He will probably lean toward playing a little bit more third, because at this point I think he's more comfortable at short, so that's not as big of a deal. I don't even think it's out of the question, not to start the year, but at some point do we need to get him some exposure to second? Just trying to pay attention with him, because he's the offensive profile that we all think is going to push the envelope, so we'll have to be diligent with getting him exposed to what he has to do at the major league level down the road."
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Right-hander Luis Reyes, who took a big step forward to log 87 innings with a 4.34 ERA at Low-A Kannapolis last year, recently underwent surgery to repair his lat and faces an extended recovery.
Outfielder Nick McLain, the third-round pick from the 2024 draft who has been limited to 13 pro games by back injury, is playing in games this spring and could even break camp with an affiliate. However, if the Sox don't stagger out the start to his season, they're likely to manage his workload in some form.
"We're probably going to have to protect him from himself a little bit. I don't know how much you've seen him play, but the way he plays the game, he only has one speed," Janish said.
Alexander Albertus and his long-troubled left tibia has not appeared in a minor league spring game yet and is unlikely to break camp with an affiliate, but otherwise Janish offered the best review of the 21-year-old's health since the Aruban infielder came over from the Dodgers at the 2024 deadline.
"He's taking live at-bats, he's hitting on the field, he's doing defense, all that stuff," Janish. "We still want to use discretion and making sure that once he does start playing in games, he can play games on back-to-back days, play nine innings back-to-back days, etc. He's in as good of a spot as we've seen him physically. He's jacked, too, he's huge. The arm is a lot better than I thought, just because I hadn't seen him before. He's got real pop too, watching him take BP, he's hitting the ball out of the park to all parts of the field."
Casey Saucke, the team's fourth-round pick from 2024 who played five games last season before succumbing to Tommy John surgery, is roughly expected back in action in May, due to a small setback in the rehab process.
