Colson Montgomery doesn't think about batting average.
"I know a lot of people are like, 'Oh, they only hit this amount,'" Montgomery said. "I would just look at production; on-base percentage, OPS, things like that, because those things are, I think, what's going to help you win games. You're getting on base, you're driving guys in, driving in runs."
Montgomery's .233 career batting average isn't the stuff of envy -- though the league as a whole is only hitting .241 this year -- but his approach is geared around driving the baseball. Given his career .513 slugging percentage, 126 wRC+ and 31 home runs in 111 games, he's achieving his goals. And with Munetaka Murakami, Miguel Vargas and Montgomery being the only team trio with nine home runs or more, there's a real sense that a cadre of White Sox boppers are sharing the load.
"Me, Mune and Vargas, I think we are all really good at it," Montgomery said. "It just feels like every single time I’m up to bat, either Vargas or Mune, they are on base. There’s opportunities to drive guys in. [Saturday], 2-0 game, we got Sam [Antonacci] on, Vargy up. Vargy gets on, there’s pressure on me to get some guys in. But then Vargy hits a homer so it’s now back to square one trying to get on base."
Before the season, Montgomery talked about his approach in terms of hunting certain zones. He wants to be locked in on specific areas of the strike zone so that his longer, leveraged stroke can be spring-loaded to drive the ball when it winds up there. He's not trying to say exactly where he's looking for pitches on record, and it can switch up against different pitchers, but they do play these games on television, and it's not hard to get a general sense from something like a Synergy heat map of his hard contact.
He's a big, tall guy who likes to extend his arms, which also serves to build my working theory for why Montgomery is wreaking so much havoc against left-handers this year (.227/.333/.545) and their reliance on breaking balls that move away from him. A sweeping slider that finishes on the outer half of the plate threatens him with a good time.
"There's also some stuff mechanically that plays to his favor against left-handed pitching, but really the big piece is the mindset of not really caring," said hitting coach Derek Shomon. "Left-on-left, this kid doesn't shy away. There are some people that play baseball that are left-handed hitters that when they face left-handed pitching it's like psshhh. Colson's like, 'OK, what's he got?' So I think it starts with that. He's not backing down because it's a lefty."
Part of the mentality of not caring is also accepting that there will be pitches that are not where he's hunting that are strikes. It's not on the level of league-leader Elly De La Cruz, all-time GOAT Yoán Moncada, or even Murakami, but of his already elevated 29.3 percent strikeout rate, an above-average amount are backwards Ks. Some of them probably feel like pitches he could have swung at, but his two-strike takes in the zone correspond pretty well with the other chart indicating where he actually does damage.
Some of these pitches might have hit the medicine ball the Sox set up behind the plate during practice to represent the heart of the strike zone, where hitters should almost always swing, but there's wiggle room when someone is fitting it within their larger approach. Selectivity requires commitment, because the game will not always provide positive feedback.
"You're going to take strikes, and not all strikes are created equally," said Shomon. "I'm not expecting guys to cover all nine zones. It's not even in the realm of reasonable. When you see that, you'll ask and usually they have a good reason -- 'Well, I wasn't looking there, I was looking somewhere else,' or 'I was looking for something else' or maybe it was just 'I got sped up on that pitch.' Whatever it is, just trying to attach a reason to it and then OK, let's move on."
"I’ve also learned you can’t cover everything," Montgomery said. "If you try to cover everything, you are swinging at everything. That’s how my mindset goes with it. Also, I think just the preparation before the game of having a good understanding of what they might pitch to you and where you are looking is huge.
"It’s definitely evolved. In the minor leagues, I didn’t do any of that stuff at all. It all kind of started since I came up to the big leagues. I think it’s just being around different players, too. I talk to [Andrew Benintendi] a lot about things like that and how pitchers are and where to look, and he’s seen everybody. He’s seen a lot of guys. So, you have to be open to be able to talk to different guys and figuring out what works for you and what works for me is not really trying to cover the whole zone. Kind of just pick a spot and trust my eyes to react."
The wrinkle to this narrative is that Montgomery spoke on Sunday morning, right on the heels of homering on a pitch that it doesn't seem like he'd ever be hunting.
So as much as Montgomery taking a strike on the inner third can represent him staying in a damage mindset as he waits out something leaking out over the plate, the next evolution sees him able to read and react to the varying ways teams will try to suppress his power, without losing sight of his larger goals.
"I think it’s just being free and easy in the moment," Montgomery said of the homer. "I feel like there’s times in at-bats where I’m kind of just letting my instincts take over. I kind of get a feeling where you anticipate where they are going to pitch.
"I remember the previous night with [Emerson] Hancock, he threw a similar pitch to me to strike me out in the first inning. I felt he was going to go up and in and so I kind of just trusted my instincts and he threw it and I was able to react."
There won't be something as quick and easy to reference as batting average to assess Montgomery's progress. When Will Venable talks about staggering contact-oriented, high on-base hitters in between the sluggers with more swing-and-miss at the top of the White Sox lineup, Montgomery is firmly established in the latter category. But he's found a simpler way of analyzing how he's doing, even if they don't put it up next to his name on the scoreboard.
"I go back to my three principles: Am I on time? Did I get a good pitch to hit? Did I take my swing?" Montgomery said. "I try to limit my thinking of getting hits, other than kind of go up there and stick with my plan and approach, compete, just try to get a good pitch to drive, a good pitch to swing at. That’s all you can do."
