A Look Beyond the Top 100: The Importance of Developmental Wins for the White Sox

Prospect lists are all the rage these days. Especially when you are a fan of a rebuilding team, like our White Sox. Many enjoy going to the various publications to see where the farm system ranks against the rest of Major League Baseball and use it as a beacon of hope for the future.

We just saw that prospect rankings don't always equate to success on the field and playoff appearances, however. There's an age-old saying in baseball that "prospects are suspects" which has proven to be the case with this team. As we prepare to have the fate of this franchise and the mood of the fan base tested with another batch of unproven talent, we must understand that simply being on a Top 100 listing doesn't guarantee future success.

Remember, it wasn't long ago that the Sox boasted one of the top farm systems in the sport and had as many as nine players crack the Top 100 listing only to have that collection of players underperform epically. Many within the fan base thought the sheer volume of players that were highly rated by prospect prognosticators of various publications meant the best of times were ahead. Yet, in the end, this group would only be on the right side of two single playoff game victories and see a window close just as fast as it opened.

Look Beyond The List

It's easy to fall in love with the aforementioned Top 100 prospect listings. Some publications are more respected than others, but just about every major national baseball site has a Top 100 listing available. You can see some wild variations from publication to publication, but many names will be common from one to the next. The funny thing about baseball is, if you peruse the rosters of every playoff team and eventual World Series champion, you'll find handfuls of players that never made a Top 100 listing. Hell, some of these players even became superstars and integral parts of their team's success.

This is why it is so important for teams to have "developmental wins." These are players that aren't sexy names within the industry. They're guys that you won't find on the various Top 100 listings and are players that don't have tremendous expectations of future success slapped on them. These are the players that all quality teams have as they seemingly come out of nowhere to contribute in meaningful ways.

Five years ago, many thought the Sox were assembling a core of superstars that would be the envy of the league for years to come and lead to an era of success the franchise had never seen before. We all know now this was folly as the development stalled for most of them and the great expectations were left unfulfilled. In recent days, we've seen midseason prospect listings updated and many are showing four Sox players on Top 100 lists (Colson Montgomery, Noah Schultz, Drew Thorpe, and Edgar Quero).

Prospect watchers are proclaiming this is the beginning of the next great Sox core, but skepticism within the fan base is at or near an all-time high because of what we just lived through. Because of the paranoia surrounding top prospects for this organization, there is a need for critical mass (yes, I'm making fun of you Rick Hahn). We know not all of these top prospects will pan out, honestly most of them won't, so this team has to find a way to develop a pipeline of players in the hopes that some will turn the corner when it wasn't expected of them.

Without Critical Acclaim

Jonathan Cannon and Brooks Baldwin are two players in the White Sox organization who have never graced a Top 100 prospect listing. Cannon was viewed as a Top 10 prospect in the Sox system, which was in the 15-20 range before the season started, while Baldwin was even lower on the depth chart. Yet, both players have exceeded expectations thus far in 2024. Cannon became the first player from the 2022 draft class to reach the big leagues, and Baldwin has just been promoted to Triple-A Charlotte in recent days.

Both players have started to pique the interest of Sox fans with their first-half performances. Cannon has pitched to a 4.20 ERA over 9 games and 8 starts with the big league club. He's had a few clunkers in there that have ballooned his ERA but he has shown enough promise with his vast assortment of pitches moving every which way to make some think he could be a viable mid-rotation piece for this team. That would be an important developmental win for the Sox. Yes, Cannon had a decent prospect pedigree being a third-round pick out of the University of Georgia just two years ago, but nobody was penciling him into future rotations at the start of this season.

Baldwin was a 12th-round selection out of UNC Wilmington in the same 2022 draft class as Cannon. Baldwin has shown solid on-base skills and gap power since entering the Sox organization two years ago and now finds himself just one step away from the corner of 35th/Shields off the strength of a .322/.386/.441 slash line in 74 games for the playoff-bound, Birmingham Barons of the Double-A Southern League. We all know the Sox are a team that has the future of its middle infield influx at the moment, and while many are anointing Colson Montgomery as the next franchise savior, his performance this season should dial back those expectations a bit.

For a team that has had a black hole at the keystone since Tadahito Iguchi was dealt away in 2007, Baldwin is the type of developmental win that this organization sorely needs. He wasn't a player who was drafted with tons of hype, didn't receive a big signing bonus, and isn't the talk of prospect watchers yet all he's done is perform since entering pro ball. Baldwin is far from a finished product and could very well be humbled with his recent promotion to Triple-A Charlotte, so I'm not penciling him in as an anchor up the middle moving forward. But his performance has been hard to ignore to this point.

We all know that the White Sox organization until it has a change in ownership will have to find ways to win on the edges without spending premium dollars for talent. If the team is able to find a mid-rotation starter and a viable middle infielder that would go a long way. Neither Cannon nor Baldwin will be looked at as franchise saviors, but they don't need to be. If they can simply be functional, quality Major League players that would go a long way towards this team assembling a contender at some point in the future.

If the White Sox are able to get two viable big leaguers in the same draft after the first round, that is the type of developmental success story we haven't had in decades. For it come from two players who were never the envy of prospect evaluators or even a large portion of the fan base, it would be an even bigger success story. Now, I know the skepticism will persist until both players have extended runs of success at the corner of 35th/Shields but that is merely a byproduct of developmental failures that have been too prevalent for this White Sox team.

Big-name prospects having success is never a bad thing in baseball. Too many teams bank on it happening, when they shouldn't as we've come to see firsthand. It sure would be nice if the Sox could flip the script and get consistent reliable play from two guys that weren't being counted on by most.

Related: Turning the Page: White Sox Will Look to Emerging Talent as Trade Deadline Looms

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