Chicago White Sox Prospect Colson Montgomery's Rough 2024 Season Should Be Cause for Concern

There wasn't a lot of positivity surrounding the 2024 Chicago White Sox before the season kicked off in March. As the 162-game death march is approaching its conclusion, mercifully, we've already witnessed the team setting a franchise record for most losses in a season. To pile onto that, we're a few weeks away from the Sox establishing a new record for single-season futility, which they're all but assured of reaching at this point.

There was some positive talk about things happening at the minor-league level when the club broke camp and headed back north after Spring Training. As the season has unfolded, we saw positive improvements on the pitching side of the equation at the minor-league level. The hope is that these improvements will be a sign of things to come in the long term as a result of Brian Bannister reshaping the pitching development program.

However, we've seen little to no improvement on the positional side of the coin. The only glimmer of hope this year has been the emergence of middle infielder Brooks Baldwin, who began the season in Double-A Birmingham and has ascended all the way to the corner of 35th/Shields, though his initial cup of coffee hasn't gone well at the plate. There's a very important name I haven't mentioned yet who was viewed as one of the most important players in the entire organization and certainly at the minor-league level: Colson Montgomery.

The 22-year-old shortstop began the year as a top-20 prospect in the sport, according to most prospect evaluators, and that led to a lot of talk within the fan base about his eventual promotion to the White Sox at some point in 2024. Yet here we are on Labor Day and there really isn't a sign of Montgomery appearing with the MLB club in 2024. And it's looking more and more likely that we won't see him before the conclusion of the worst season in franchise history according to general manager Chris Getz, who recently told MLB.com's Scott Merkin:

“Haven’t made that decision yet. We’re still looking for a little bit more consistency in the bat. There have been some positive signs along the way, but most importantly, we have to make sure he is foundationally in a good spot before we challenge him at the Major League level.”

Getz stating the club is looking for more consistency in the bat is, frankly, tap dancing around Montgomery's disappointing season to say the least. So far in 489 plate appearances with Triple-A Charlotte, Montgomery is slashing a mere .206/.324/.368 penciling out to 83 wRC+ with 14 homers. That stat line is a far cry from what some were expecting given the extremely offense-friendly environment for the International League and the team's home venue at Truist Park in uptown Charlotte.

Faulty Plan

Did the White Sox do Colson Montgomery a disservice by sending him straight to Triple-A to begin the 2024 season? My Sox On Tap cohort Besnik Zekiri and I pondered this very question during our season preview show on the eve of Opening Day in late March. We both agreed that the decision to assign Monteomgery to Charlotte to begin the year was an aggressive one by the club, which frankly we didn't agree with. This was largely lambasted by many within the fan base, but given how 2024 has played out, were we on to something?

The Sox' top prospect heading into the season had only accumulated 217 plate appearances across two seasons in Double-A, with the first 52 coming as part of the famed "Project Birmingham" to close out the 2022 campaign. In all, Montgomery slashed just .218/.350/.391 during his time in the Southern League. His second tour during his injury-shortened 2023 season produced better results as he slashed .244/.400/.427, good for 129 wRC+. You can look at those numbers and see tangible improvement, but I don't see how that warranted a promotion, honestly.

My argument against sending him to Triple-A was that he hadn't truly dominated the Southern League in a way other recent White Sox prospects had. His 129 wRC+ in 2023 was largely buoyed by a 15% walk rate as he wasn't doing a ton of damage when he was connecting with the baseball, and even that wasn't quite enough in my eyes. When you contrast his performance in Double-A with a few other recent Sox prospects, it just simply doesn't stack up.

White Sox Prospects' Double-A Production

As you can see, one of these is not quite like the others. Montgomery's solid Double-A line is by and large attributed to his walk rate. While I've been pining for the White Sox to develop more players with advanced plate discipline and an ability to work counts and take free passes when given, it can't be their sole calling card in the batter's box. Even a player who's been abysmal at the big-league level in Oscar Colas was more impactful with the bat than Montgomery was in Double-A before getting the call to Charlotte.

For this reason, I wanted the team to send Montgomery back to the Southern League to start the year and make him hit his way to the next level instead of walking his way to it. We have to be blunt here, most of the pitchers he saw in Double-A will not even sniff the game's highest level, so is showing an ability to draw walks against them instead of impacting the baseball really worthy of continuing to ascend the game's developmental ladder?

Failure to Launch

I've talked very frequently about the overall poor pitching presently featured in Triple-A and the extreme offensive environment of the Knights' home ballpark. Those factors are why I think there should be more eyes on the poor season Colson Montgomery has endured in 2024. Across 489 plate appearances, he's slashed a mere .206/.324/.368 with 14 homers. Again, if you contrast those numbers with the likes of Eloy Jimenez's and Luis Robert Jr.'s during their time in the International League, Montgomery's output simply doesn't stack up.

The 2021 first-round pick is still drawing walks at a well above-average 12.1% clip, but he's striking out an alarming 28.6% (and that number was over 30% for a large portion of the season). As if Montgomery's bat-to-ball skills weren't concerning enough, perhaps more concerning is his overall lack of slugging. While slugging across just about all levels of the game has taken a precipitous decline this year, a .368 SLG% in one of the most offensive environments in all of baseball, not just the minor leagues, should be getting more attention than it has.

The 22-year-old shortstop's mark of 83 wRC+ is almost entirely propped up by that elevated walk rate, which simply can't be expected to be sustainable at the game's highest level given he isn't making enough contact against inferior arms at this point. I think it's clear to say at this point that Montgomery isn't ready to realize his major-league dream and we have to begin to ask some tough questions about it.

Swept Under the Rug

If you peruse social media and listen to clips from Chris Getz and director of player development Paul Janish, you'd think there's no reason to be concerned at all with Colson Montgomery's tough 2024 season. Should that really be the case? In my opinion, it shouldn't be. We've seen him labeled as the cornerstone of Rebuild 3.0, a player many are penciling in at shortstop for the next 6-7 years, but it looks like many are getting ahead of themselves.

You're not seeing many people sounding the alarm bells about Montgomery's performance at the minor-league level, but I feel we should be doing so at the moment. The White Sox organization doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to player development, so why are so many so quick to write Montgomery's underwhelming season off as a blip on the radar? I'm not sure what I'm missing here.

We've seen recent Sox prospects more highly rated than Montgomery across the scouting industry perform better against minor-league pitching only to reach the show and not live up to their prospect pedigree. Yet I'm supposed to believe everything is fine with Montgomery? Let me be clear, I'm not writing him off at the moment. I'm not saying Montgomery won't be a good player for the White Sox, but the assumption and talking points that everything is fine simply don't hold water. There are clearly adjustments Montgomery must make before we can pencil him in as the team's shortstop and a franchise cornerstone going into the future. To ignore this is simply foolish.

In a season where everything has gone wrong for the White Sox, Montgomery's stalled development is one of the biggest disappointments for a team that has a list too long to review. We can't sit here and ignore this fact, despite what many want you to believe right now. Is Montgomery a finished product right now? By no means. Can this experience in 2024 be the catalyst to making meaningful adjustments that get him back on track next season? Absolutely, but only time will tell with that.

I want Montgomery to be good when he puts on a White Sox uniform. We all desperately need some sort of positivity with this team right now. Here's to hoping that 2024 is nothing more than a bump in the road for him, but at this point, we all need to proceed with caution and stop anointing him as a franchise savior. We've made that mistake far too many times in recent years, and we should know better at this point.

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