Up until now, I'd saved my top prospect rankings for my White Sox Outsider books, so I've always put a price tag on them, even if I didn't realize it.
So why stop now?
(Thanks for supporting Sox Machine. It's greatly appreciated.)
I'm not the most equipped to rank prospects in terms of scouting, ability, baseball acumen, etc. What I bring to the table is some knowledge, a lot of reading, and a lot of experience watching White Sox prospects rise and fall. I'd call my approach half Jim Callis, half Marie Kondo. I can pick up some visuals and some numbers, but I'm also picking up prospects one by one and evaluating the innate response. That method is responsible for the No. 9 spot more than anything.
The rest of the list is more sensible. And it might be more honest than sensible. Put that on my tombstone and fight me in the comments.
Actually untouchable
No. 1: Eloy Jimenez
Ever since the White Sox threw in the towel on the first rebuild, I've been waiting for the White Sox to acquire players who make the game look simple, and who don't spend months or years tweeting motivational messages about setbacks preceding comebacks, defying doubters, ignoring the haters, etc. With Yoan Moncada wrestling his first pro season to a draw, Jimenez is the hope for a Ronald Acuna/Juan Soto hitting prodigy who shows up with a rare understanding of the game's mechanics. He can't fathom making contact without barreling it, because swinging otherwise is wasteful and tacky.
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Technically touchable, too talented
No. 2: Michael Kopech
No. 3: Dylan Cease
I don't think there's a Soto/Acuna level for pitching prospects, because pitching is inherently a hazardous profession. But there aren't many more highly regarded pitching prospects than Kopech and Cease, and they've already had Tommy John surgery at this point. TINSTAAPP means that you could trade them for a haul with a decent chance at winning the deal, but that also means that acquiring young impact pitching is fraught with peril. The Sox have already done the hard part.
No. 4: Luis Robert
If injuries beget injuries, then Robert's family tree is going to be out of control. But then you look at the show he put on in the Arizona Fall League after finding his groove ...
... and like John Mulaney's overly permissive Law & Order judge, I want to see where he's going with this.
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Compelling skill sets
No. 5: Luis Basabe
No. 6: Nick Madrigal
Now we're getting to the part of the list where we have a pretty good idea of what these players' ceilings look like, but those ceiling are still hard to replace. Basabe is a 20-20 candidate with legit center field defense, which the Sox haven't had in their system since they traded Chris Young and rolled with Brian Anderson. (At the risk of relitigating a 13-year-old trade, I've assumed Anderson wouldn't have gotten the deal done.) I could also see Basabe's switch-hitting generating massive growing pains and being average at best, but I'm looking forward to seeing if/how he builds on his strong finish in Birmingham.
Madrigal is in a similar spot, albeit with a vastly different game. Watching him settle for opposite-field singles throughout the season, I could kinda see where Keith Law is coming from by leaving him off a top 100 list. It strikes me as an extremely uncharitable reading of his hand injury, but if you don't think there's a whole lot of projection remaining, that's a hard way to make a living. Conversely, Placido Polanco slugged .352 in Triple-A. He ended up being worth 40 WAR and a real pain in the ass when watching him on the other team. It'd be fun if Madrigal turned into somebody who makes batting average a little bit sexy, a little bit dangerous. Unless Jimenez is already doing that. That's also fine.
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Good outfielders, just lesser outfielders
No. 7: Luis Gonzalez
No. 8: Micker Adolfo
Gonzalez to me feels like an economy-model version of Basabe. You don't get the switch hitting, horsepower or heated seats, but it gets you from Point A to Point B in center field just the same. There's enough agreement among various scouting outlets that Gonzalez can get more out of his power and/or speed to be more than mere wishcasting, but it's possible his mechanics and approach naturally limit the physical impact he can make, at least at the plate.
Adolfo flashes the same drive-the-ball-where-it's-pitched potential as Jimenez, but without the seemingly preternatural ability to do it so regularly, regardless of surroundings or physical condition. Likewise, Adolfo has Jimenez's tendency to get banged up, except his injuries have required major surgery. I respect what Adolfo's done to make himself as interesting as he is, and, fingers crossed, he's the guy to break down the wall between the White Sox' international signings and Birmingham.
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Teenage terror
No. 9: Bryce Bush
OK, so the ranking is likely overinflated, but the White Sox don't have many 18-year-olds hitting .309/.396/.453 in rookie ball. OK, any of them besides Bush.
Bush might be 2018's Justin Yurchak or an Aaron Schnurbusch, the third-day draft pick who lights up the Arizona Rookie and Pioneer leagues only to hit a wall immediately upon entering full-season ball, and without defensive skills to supplement raw production. But unlike those guys (who came out of college ball), or fellow 2018 Great Falls breakout candidate Amado Nunez (who had multiple exposures to stateside pitching before it clicked), Bush is a prep pick from a cold weather state. Mystery boxes are already hard to resist, and there's more mystery here than usual!
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Harsher realities
No. 10: Dane Dunning
No. 11: Zack Collins
No. 12: Alec Hansen
Had Dunning's season not ended with an elbow sprain that has not yet required surgery, I'd probably slot him in his own category between Robert and Basabe. Dunning cut down on home runs allowed, suggesting that he'd figured out how to make his fastball less exploitable, and thus better at setting up his secondary pitches. But with the elbow compromising his status, all outcomes register with the same amount of resonance for better or worse. I get how he can sidestep the worst-case scenario and resume his ascent to cromulent mid-rotation starting. If he needed surgery in April, I'd get that, too. And I'd also get if the White Sox traded him for somebody they feel is walking less of a tightrope between a productive MLB career and injury-related toil.
Collins doesn't seem like he can get to the majors as a .230 Double-A hitter with his catching skills, or as a regular catcher with his hitting skills. What makes it complicated is that his plate discipline is nuts and the power makes it play if only he can hit a little more. I suppose I'm leaving open the possibility that moving out from behind the plate makes the hitting part simpler, because the Sox can do that with no harm to their overall picture. There's plenty of room at first base, at least unless Gavin Sheets starts bringing the thunder in his third year.
Hansen took such a massive step back that it's going to linger for a while, regardless of whether he rebounds in 2019. The hope is that the forearm injury threw his mechanics out of whack, and a full offseason and healthy spring will help him find his keys, but it'll probably take two consecutive productive seasons to tell which Hansen is the real one before pulling the trigger.
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I'll stop the ranking here, because the remaining prospects strike me as slightly reductive versions of players already on the list, at least at this point in time. Sheets and Collins might eventually fight for the same parking spot, Blake Rutherford and Steele Walker are in Gonzalez's lineage, Jimmy Lambert fits Dane Dunning's mold, Nunez might be Bush plus two years, and so on and so forth.
The other four posts, with their ~45 prospects covered therein, should reflect my general sense of their stock and paths toward beating the odds. After all the awful injury luck last year, hopefully the White Sox are in for an upswing in positive surprises this time around.
