Baseball Prospectus broke the seal on 2023 White Sox prospect rankings by releasing its top 10 list on Friday, and it provided the first set at staking ground for a few prospects I feel will be particularly divisive.
Ben Spanier is listed as the lead author, which is good since he's provided a lot of the in-person looks and highlights for the North Carolina-based affiliates over the course of the season.
- Colson Montgomery
- Oscar Colás
- Bryan Ramos
- Norge Vera
- Cristian Mena
- Noah Schultz
- Peyton Pallette
- José Rodríguez
- Luis Mieses
- Sean Burke
There are a lot of directions you can run with the list, but some disagreements are a natural product of circumstances. I'm not so much interested in the placements of Schultz and Pallette because they didn't pitch meaningful innings at the amateur, college or pro levels in 2022, so I don't think any ranking has a whole lot of nutritional value. Likewise, I feel like Rodríguez could fluctuate between the top and bottom halves of these lists because the hamate injury is not yet behind him, and that's understandable.
As for Mieses, well, BP has a tendency to have one guy pop in the top 10 with no company. Last year, it was Jonathan Stiever despite season-ending lat surgery after an awful 2021. The year before that, Avery Weems cracked the top 10. Compared to those two, Mieses has a little more going for him.
There are a few players who I expect might have big splits in their rankings due to uneven performances, and whose names I will seek out before assessing a list as a whole:
Norge Vera: He's 22 and he's pitched a grand total of 54⅓ innings over two seasons. What's more, he issued 31 walks over 35⅓ innings last year, including 16 over 11⅓ innings between Winston-Salem and Project Birmingham. Despite pitching only four innings once all season, he didn't really melt the radar gun, with readings from 92-94 in a couple webcasts later in the season.
The good news is that his problems were largely self-inflicted, because he didn't really get squared up, yielding just one homer over 13 games. There's reason to think he has more than he's shown, and Spanier is really bullish on his top two pitches.
Vera possesses more control than command at present, but his delivery is clean and he has shown feel for locating the fastball up, which is where it plays best. There is also some deception in his motion, which begins deliberately, but eventually leads to a last-second burst of a quick arm action out of a high slot. His main secondary is a true overhand curve that seemed sluggish in his first couple of starts but appeared more promising on my third look. The pitch shows great depth and at times sharp and late movement, projecting above-average and occasionally flashing plus, contrasting well with the number one when located at the bottom of the zone. The change is a show-me pitch at present, but it’s improved command and consistent execution of the curve that will get Vera where he needs to go.
Cristian Mena: He probably had the best season of any prospect in a pound-for-pound sense, striking out 126 batters against 38 walks while posting a 3.80 ERA over 104⅓ innings across three levels at age 19. He seems like a comfortable top-10 selection given the lack of standout pitching performances in the system, but I'm more curious if his name has any resonance among prospect types. So far, so good, with a fifth spot on this list.
Lenyn Sosa: In 2020, he registered as BP's off-the-radar prospect by grabbing the 10th spot on that year's list. After a stunningly succcessful minor-league season that resulted in a couple cups of coffee with the White Sox at the age of 22, he's all the way up to ... 11th.
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense on its face, but the three biggest selling points of Sosa's surge can be credibly doubted:
- Power: The increased strength in his swing is noticeable ... but it's also not a classic home run stroke, and all-fields power doesn't do the kind of damage that it used to.
- Patience: He showed a better handle on the strike zone than ever before ... but it can still get away from him in a hurry.
- Versatility: He can handle three positions ... but he's best at second base.
And Romy González is right there as a random Birmingham breakout player whose strengths might not be strong enough at the MLB level. It wouldn't shock me if it ends up that 2022 represented Sosa's peak stock in a similar fashion, although González had injury and illness to blame for most of his struggles this past season.
But I also tend to be of the mindset that a player who has shown the ability to make significant strides while young for the level deserves leeway to show that he can further fine-tune an approach. It's not like Sosa needed to be better at any one thing when he was hitting .331/.384/.549 in Birmingham, and he crushed the ball for Charlotte over the final few series of the season. Development isn't linear, but Sosa's tendency to struggle at a a level before the lightbulb flickers on might be the most reliable pattern in the White Sox system. I'm waiting until after trades are made before putting any number on a prospect, but if he's still around, I'll probably be inclined to give him more credit for that feature of his track record.