We usually don't have Minor Keys on Tuesday mornings because at most there's one game's results to relay and it's typically unviewable, but Monday night's ACL action is worth noting because Mason Adams made his return to the mound about 13½ months after undergoing Tommy John surgery in April 2025.
Adams pitched two innings and faced eight batters in his first rehab outing, with FutureSox relaying a pitch count of 23. He's the second of last year's UCL repair patients to appear in game action, but the first to make it through his first rehab outing, as Prelander Berroa left his game after one batter and is currently back on the shelf with elbow inflammation.
Considering Tanner McDougal and Shane Smith are on the injured list with no defined timetables and Hagen Smith still has an on-again-off-again relationship with the strike zone, the White Sox could use a relatively seamless return from at least one of last year's injured pitchers, be it Adams, Drew Thorpe or Ky Bush.
⚙️⚙️⚙️
Not only does Baseball America update its Top 100 Prospects lists monthly, now it's updating its lists for all 30 organizations, including the White Sox.
In-season revisions are always difficult to derive consistent meaning from, which is why we don't do them. On one hand, it accounts for an early season breakout like Colby Shelton, who now ranks 11th after being left off the preseason list. His write-up includes the stuff about the deeper crouch and enhanced A-swing tendencies James wrote about, but it also includes some batted-ball data we're not always privy to, saying that "Shelton’s 90th percentile exit velocity trails only Braden Montgomery among White Sox hitters." Shelton also cracked BA's list of 10 rising prospects across baseball.
Pierce George is the other White Sox prospect who came from the unranked ranks to crash the middle third, as he now slots in behind Adams at No. 16. Other sizable shifts in either direction:
- Christian Oppor: -12 (No. 20, previously No. 8)
- Gabe Davis: +9 (18)
- Aldrin Batista: -8 (26)
- Mathias LaCombe: -6 (17)
To me, the strangest case is freshly minted International League Player of the Week Jacob Gonzalez, who only moved up from 25th to 23rd despite hitting .306/.423/.638 as a 24-year-old in Triple-A. There's reason to think his numbers are juiced by Truist Field, but its lack of resonance is still odd, if only because when you take into account the net loss of two prospects due to trades and Rule 5 returns -- Gage Ziehl, Jedixson Páez and Alexander Alberto exited, with only David Sandlin entering) -- Gonzalez effectively ranked 23rd before the reshuffling.
ACL Athletics 2, ACL White Sox 1
- Landon Hodge went 0-for-3 with a strikeout.
- Jose Mendoza was 1-for-3 with a homer and a strikeout.
- Eduardo Herrera singled twice and struck out once.
- Jordan Rich was 0-for-3.
- Mason Adams: 2 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 1 K,
