Wrangling 2023 White Sox Prospects: New in town

We started our White Sox prospects tour by looking at the ones who had to deal with significant injuries because I like to ease into Prospect Week.

Now we'll turn our attention to White Sox draft picks and international signings who got their first taste of pro ball in 2022, at least if their bodies allowed them to. Injury, illness and (potential) overuse delayed the affiliated debuts of three draft picks, but they'll still figure into various medium- and long-term plans if they're able to resume action with the powers described in their draft reports.

(This doesn't cover the latest slew of international signings from last month, because those guys haven't yet had the chance to make an impression in the White Sox organization.)

Noah Schultz

It should be said that the White Sox's first two draft picks haven't yet made a publicly consumable impression in professional baseball, either. Schultz, whose senior season at Oswego East was waylaid by mono, spent the post-draft period preparing for instructs, during which he appeared in four games.

The 6-foot-9-inch lefty signed for slightly over slot at $2.8 million after the White Sox drafted him with the 26th pick, and it's been a while since the White Sox selected a pitcher in the first round without expecting immediate results.

Now, how big of a project is Schultz? Guys like Mike Shirley and Chris Getz have emphasized that Schultz's abnormal height and lack of recent experience won't pose a problem when it comes to balance and repeatable mechanics, and Everett Teaford has already shifted his fastball approach to emphasize the two-seamer.

While Schultz's selection surprised, draft experts could understand the calculated risk. If Schultz went to Vanderbilt, there's a non-negligible chance that he 1) would cost twice as much three years from now, and 2) wouldn't fall to the Sox. The Sox pursued upside from a guy they'd seen plenty of, and with Shirley's pick of Colson Montgomery paying early dividends, he's earned a little bit of leeway.

Peyton Pallette

Pallette is the more standard kind of unavailable draft pick, the SEC pitcher who missed all of the 2022 season due to Tommy John surgery.

When everybody last saw Pallette, he'd pitched 56 decent innings during his sophomore season at Arkansas (4.02 ERA, 67 strikeouts to 20 walks over 56 innings). Evaluators liked his three-pitch mix, but unlike somebody like Walker Buehler, who needed Tommy John surgery shortly after the Dodgers drafted him in the first round, he hadn't yet been able to show it during the course of a full collegiate slate. That's what allowed the Sox to draft him when they did.

If he's back to where he was, he hovers around 95 with a high-spin curveball and a changeup that's good enough for now. That should make pretty quick work of the low minors, unless the White Sox want him to practice getting up and down more than they want him facing challenging competition in his first year back.

Jonathan Cannon

Cannon was ballast against the risk of the first two picks, as he was healthy enough to throw 13 starts and 78 innings for Georgia, followed by four abbreviated appearances in pro ball -- one in Arizona and three in Kannapolis.

Cannon has a big frame (6'6"), decent velocity (93-95 mph) and throws strikes, and he's shown the ability to adapt his arsenal. He lasted until the third round because he doesn't miss as many bats as the raw ingredients would lead you to expect, due to a lack of deception in the delivery and sharpness on the slider. He'll require further tweaks to avoid getting punished by high-minors hitters, but at least he'll be able to get a head start on it.

Jordan Sprinkle

The White Sox drafted a real shortstop with their fourth-round pick. All the pressing questions were on the other side of the ball, and his pro debut didn't do anything to address them. He hit just .237/.290/.301 over 22 games for the Cannon Ballers, following a disappointing junior season at UC Santa Barbara (.285/.381/.416). He'd shown better with the Gauchos, so belief in a breakout isn't entirely unfounded, but first the Sox are going to have to figure out how to stop the backsliding.

Tyler Schweitzer

The left-handed Schweitzer didn't pitch during the minor-league regular season after racking up 91⅔ innings for Ball State during the regular season, including a 143-pitch outing in the MAC tournament. He was named the conference's pitcher of the year, and as a reward, received the White Sox draft class' last bonus on Day 2 that would look out of place on Day 3 ($325,000). He has a three-pitch mix to open his pro career as a starter, but his fastball jumps in short stints, so a transition to relief may be possible.

Jacob Burke

In a 40-round draft, the players who received six figures on Day 3 stood out as potentially intriguing. In a 20-round draft, the Sox gave bonuses of $100,000 or more to 70 percent of their Day 3 picks, which makes it harder to know whether the standards remained the same, or whether the condensed nature put more pressure on the Sox to spend something.

At $225,000, the 11th-rounder Burke received $100,000 more than any other Day 3 pick, so that sets him apart. The Miami product further distinguished himself from the pack with a decent pro debut in Kannapolis, as he hit .269/.380/.410 over 22 games, most of which were spent in center field.

Erick Hernández

Hernández, the first non-Cuban teenager to receive a seven-figure bonus from the White Sox since Josue Guerrero back in 2016, certainly looked like a million-dollar man at the start of his pro career, hitting .317/.438/.433 over 16 games and 73 plate appearances in June.

The next 22 games tanked his numbers, as he hit .161/.250/.185 with just two doubles in the extra-base-hit department. Baseball America's Bill Mitchell said on the FutureSox podcast that a knee issue was to blame, so I could've lumped him in with the previous installment, but he showed enough understanding of the strike zone to head to a stateside debut in 2023 regardless, and that's when our real understanding of his skill set will begin.

Ryan Burrowes

If there were a José Rodríguez Award for the most intriguing DSL performance by a previously anonymous signing, Burrowes would be this year's recipient. The Panamanian 17-year-old hit .266/.393/.392 with 25 walks against 34 strikeouts over 47 games, as well as a 12-for-12 performance on the basepaths. That's a lot of initial production from a $70,000 signing.

The chief reason I'm suppressing excitement up to this point is that Benyamin Bailey also came out of Panamanian obscurity to dominate the DSL, but hasn't found any traction at either of the lowest stateside levels in two tries. Burrowes shouldn't have the cancellation of an entire minor-league season to interrupt his ascent, at least.

Loidel Chapellí Jr.

Chapellí posted superior numbers to Burrowes, hitting .344/.448/.636 with 10 homers, seven triples, seven doubles, 10 stolen bases in 13 attempts, and more walks (27) than strikeouts (22). Then again, he did it as a 20-year-old with Serie Nacional experience in Cuba,

He joined the White Sox organization in May on a $500,000 bonus, which is the kind of deal Marco Paddy might be looking to strike with his leftover funds in the coming months.

Chapellí is listed at 5'8" and 187 pounds, so he's working with one of the more unusual frames toward the goal of making an impact. That said, there's bat speed and he runs well, so it's worth an open mind.

That said, Sox Machine supporter Wayne wants me to close my mind and make an immediate judgment:

With only DSL experience, and (stateside instructs I believe), I want your "prediction" to his first stateside year. No wait and see how he does stateside with players closer to his age (because I know that is the rational take). I want the irrational take. Like he is nothing and will flush out of the system, or this is the 202# starting 2B.

I suppose the closest thing to an irrational take -- at least one that isn't trying to bet on Rookie of the Year futures -- would be one that even tries to plot out a starting second baseman timeline, because he's closer to Yoelqui Céspedes and Yolbert Sánchez as somebody who has to wring an awful lot out of a smaller frame, and doesn't have the traditional runway to get it done. The DSL production is great, but it'd be disappointing if he couldn't thrive against that kind of pitching. To say he'll filter out of the system by Double-A doesn't seem like an especially spicy take.

That said, he's at least younger than Céspedes and Sánchez. He'll make his A-ball debut at age-21, so he's only behind the age curve in the sense that the Sox only have three more seasons before having to decide whether to add him to the 40-man roster, which is usually only reserved for guys without college experience. It'll be disappointing if he looks overwhelmed by his first several weeks at Kannapolis, but he has more room for stateside grace than his predecessors.