Highlighting several standouts this summer — and a few flops
We’re only five games into the season. It’s not too late for predictions, right — especially if they’re bold?
Davis Martin makes All-Star team, leads Sox pitchers in WAR
Bold predictions are supposed to be bold, right? Martin was better in his 2022 debut year than his 4.83 ERA suggests. If you recall, he was sitting pretty at 3.65 through 13 games and 62 innings before getting tagged for nine runs on the last day of the season.
More importantly, he seems to have completely reworked his arsenal during his recovery from the Tommy John surgery he underwent after that 2022 debut. He added a high-80s cutter that falls squarely in-between his fastball and slider in terms of both velocity and movement. Martin also showed a completely revamped “kick-change” that’s a total departure from his previous changeup. This spring, he’s broken out a sinker that should help him keep it on the ground after allowing fly balls — and especially pulled fly balls — at a rate well-more than league average last year.
Martin had always shown excellent bat-missing ability in the minors, and while it has yet to manifest in the big leagues he looks to have made the adjustments that could allow it to happen. He was more or less a league-average pitcher in his 10 starts last season, finishing on a 2.5-3 WAR pace and flashing an improved strikeout rate despite a major spike in walks (a classic symptom of post-TJ rust) and slightly diminished fastball velocity. With that surgery now approaching two years in the rear-view mirror, Martin should take a significant step forward and become the team’s de facto No. 1 starter in the intermediate between now and the arrival of Hagen Smith and Noah Schultz.
Speaking of which …
At least two of Hagen Smith, Edgar Quero, and Noah Schultz earn Rookie of the Year votes
There are two simple elements to this that are possessed by all three of these young players: They are all on the cusp of the big leagues, and they all have skill sets that lend themselves well to the kind of instant-impact stats that award voters love, even if there’s still plenty of polishing left to be done on all three counts.
Smith is the easiest call of the bunch. He was rated as the most advanced pitcher in the 2024 draft, and while control issues marred his Spring Training, his high-octane fastball/slider combo would play in the big leagues right now. There are plenty of questions about his long-term viability as a top-of-the-rotation starter. But the recent history of pitchers in this mold — power lefties built like tanks who dominated college lineups with an electric two-pitch mix — gives you names like Garrett Crochet, Shane McClanahan, Carlos Rodón and Sean Newcomb, all of whom posted average-or-better strikeout and ERA results as soon as they set foot in the majors.
Quero doesn’t have the supercharged skill set of Smith, but his combination of power and plate discipline should translate to The Show without much of an adjustment period, if they’re going to translate at all. If that sentence gives you Zack Collins flashbacks, fear not — when Collins was Quero’s age he was just starting his junior year at the University of Miami, and while Collins’ inability to make contact totally hamstrung the rest of his skill set Quero shouldn’t have the same issues. Quero’s long-success in the majors will probably be dependent on whether he can stay at catcher, but in the immediate his bat-to-ball ability, extensive professional experience, and the relative stability he’s shown moving level-to-level makes him a stronger candidate to make an impact in 2025 than fellow top backstop Kyle Teel.
The case for Schultz is simple. He has a unicorn skill set, and if he sees the big leagues in 2025 it probably means he’s put things together well enough to dominate immediately. Schultz is the most unlikely of the three to fulfill this predicition, because even in a best-case scenario he won’t pitch enough to be a serious RoY contender. But even a relatively short debut could bring enough flashy stats (read: strikeouts) and good results to merit a few down-ballot votes.
Colson Montgomery starts at least 80 games but fails to cement himself as shortstop of the future
I hope I’m wrong, but I’m quite nervous about the red flags that sprung up around Montgomery’s first look at Triple-A in 2024. His strikeout and pop-up rates of 28% and 26.7% (of all balls hit in the air) simply won’t play in the majors without exceptional power — and Montgomery doesn’t have it. If he can’t allay concerns about his ability to stick at shortstop this season, his long-term ceiling will be far lower at third base without, again, a measurable increase in power. Finally, I’m frightened by how much even the good-looking parts of his disappointing output in 2024 were powered by a strong September, when upper-minors pitching is somewhat diluted by MLB call-ups.
That being said, Montgomery is still quite young, and in both 2022 and 2023 he showed the ability to successfully adjust to higher levels of the minors after initially struggling. He appears to be a precocious thinker at the plate and in the cage, and his underlying plate discipline and contact metrics were still solid enough that I suspect the strikeouts and batted-ball quality will improve. Lenyn Sosa’s big league home is at second base, and it won’t take a transcendent performance to be a better option at shortstop than Jacob Amaya and Brooks Baldwin.
Montgomery will take enough of a step forward in Charlotte to play his way onto the roster sooner rather than later. Given the current holes in his game and history of starting slow after a promotion, though, we’ll still have more questions than answers after his first run with the big club.
Bryan Ramos is a lineup fixture by the end of the season
Despite a lackluster season and White Sox debut in 2024, I’m still in on Ramos’ ability to be in impact hitter in the majors. He just turned 23 years old, and I’m going to need to see more than 64 games of league-average production in Triple-A before I turn my back on the previous two years of solidly above-average production while being several years young for his level. I’d like to say I see him as the starting third baseman by season’s end, but given that he’ll miss the first few weeks of the season (at least) with an elbow strain, I’m hedging my bets as far as where he ends up in the field.
His 2024 debut was a mixed bag in terms of expected stats and contact quality, and Statcast’s newly-released bat tracking and batting stance data shows an interesting combination of a deep average point of contact (indicating he was frequently late on pitches) and above-average pull and pulled fly ball rates. Those two points seem contradictory, and to me it suggests that while Ramos struggled with pitch recognition in his first taste of the majors, he was effective at getting in front and pulling the ball when he did pick up a pitch he liked. If more experience improves that pitch recognition, Ramos’ ability to put the ball in the air to the pull side will make his roughly average bat speed and exit velocities play a grade or two up.
If I’m being really bold, there’s a scenario where a fully actualized Ramos looks like some variation of Isaac Paredes or Eugenio Suárez, whose ability to simply pull everything in the air leads to power numbers far outstripping their raw strength. But unless Miguel Vargas undergoes one of the most radical transformations in defensive prowess I’ve ever seen, it probably won’t take that much to claim a spot somewhere in the infield. Relatedly …
Andrew Vaughn is non-tendered after the season
You can only be so positive when making predictions about this team. It greatly saddens me to abandon ship on the USS Andrew Vaughn, but I’ve seen enough. I’ve long hoped that Vaughn would be able to translate his exceptional combination of strength and bat-to-ball ability into a bonafide slugger, but entering year five, it’s hard to see it happening anymore. Most of the time, after 500 games and 2,000 at bats, you are who you are as a hitter. Next offseason will be his final year of arbitration eligibility before free agency. It’ll probably require a sizeable leap forward for this front office to be inclined to pay what he’ll be in line to earn, and I just don’t think it’s in the cards at this point.
Shane Smith saves at least 15 games this year
The Sox bullpen in general is going to look like Highlander this year, an open free-for-all to see who can pitch their way into high-leverage work (and a spot on the roster in the coming years). The rotation, on the other hand, looks like it could be relatively stable. Martín Pérez, Davis Martin, Jonathan Cannon, and Sean Burke are all going to have a long leash as starters. Smith, not so much. He certainly earned a shot to stick as a starter with an electric showing in Spring Training, but he also made it clear that he has the stuff to succeed in the back of a bullpen if starting doesn’t work out. If any of Hagen Smith, Noah Schultz, Nick Nastrini, Jairo Iriarte or Wikelman González push for a chance at the majors early in the season, it will probably come at Smith’s expense, potential injuries elsewhere aside. Given the chaotic state at the bullpen, it won’t surprise me if Smith seizes hold of whatever end-of-game job there is to be had in the event that he gets pushed out of the rotation.