Wrangling 2023 White Sox Prospects: When injuries interfered

Such is the White Sox farm system that their relatively good health can be spun both positively and negatively.

Great news! Basically the bulk of the White Sox prospects list made it through the season with few injuries of note.

OR

Uh oh! The White Sox system had pretty good health luck and still couldn't get out of the bottom five!

Obviously you wouldn't root for the outcome with more jeopardized careers unless your character is irredeemable, but there is sometimes small solace in easy explanations for awful outcomes. You know the saying: "At least we have our health ... to blame." Instead, figuring out why the Sox system didn't make major strides will take the harder work of sussing out patterns from individual issues.

This list had six names on it last year, and there are six names on it this year -- except three of those six names are repeats for the same injury. Two had Tommy John surgery at times that took all or most of their 2022 seasons, and the other had a lat issue that well overstayed its welcome.

José Rodríguez

Rodríguez's 2022 season was bookended by hardships he'd never experienced as a professional.

It opened with his longest slump yet, as the guy who immediately adjusted to every challenge he faced hit just .222/.275/.307 over his first 50 games with the Barons. He bailed out his numbers with a furious midsummer surge, but that was cut short when he broke a hamate in his left hand (although it's pretty baller that he homered with his last swing of the season).

Rodríguez hit .333/.399/.544 with 24 walks, 29 strikeouts and 28 stolen bases over his last 54 games. Had he been able to see that kind of production through to the end of the season, you're probably looking at a consensus top-five prospect in the system, especially since you could say he conquered Double-A at the age of 21. Instead, his season line -- .280/.340/.430 -- stopped just a little bit short of great.

The hamate injury poses a slight wrinkle. He should be able to recover, but it introduces a respectable amount of doubt because he needs every bit of his present power to stand a chance of being more than a role player at the MLB level. The first two months of the season can probably be dismissed in time as the typical struggles of a young-for-level player who has to tamp down his aggression, but it did provide a glimpse of a future where Rodríguez struggles to rediscover an effective power stroke against upper-level pitching, and finds himself losing his hit tool in pursuit of pop.

Norge Vera

Vera entered the 2022 season at age-22 with just 19 professional innings under his belt, and all of those innings were in the Dominican Summer League.

Alas, a lat injury in spring training delayed his stateside debut by two months, and then he appeared to wear down in the final months of the season despite pitching just 35⅓ innings, with fluctuating velocities and diminishing command. When he's on top of his game, the stuff is legit, but it's also fair to question whether you can count on his stuff maintaining its power.

James Fegan reported that Vera is working with the White Sox's strength and conditioning team this winter. A turnaround is less vital now that the White Sox drafted Noah Schultz, Peyton Pallette and Jonathan Cannon in the first three rounds of last year's draft, but you could also flip the script and say a Vera revival is necessary insurance against the new guys' own uncertainties.

Caleb Freeman

Before Davis Martin made the leap, Caleb Freeman had been the organization's most encouraging third-day draft selection out of Texas Tech. He went in the 15th round of the 2019 draft, one year and one round later than Martin, but he put himself on the radar sooner than Martin by enjoying late-relief success for Winston-Salem and Birmingham in 2021, along with a positive cameo in the Arizona Fall League. It was fair to consider him as a candidate for MLB work at some point in 2022 given the progress he'd made.

Alas, the Freeman who had made such positive strides with his control in previous seasons opened 2022 by walking six of the first 13 batters he faced, and it didn't get any easier from there. He was sporadically available over the first month of the season, then spent nearly three months on the IL. Eric Longenhagen reported low-90s velocity toward the end of the season, as opposed to the easy mid-90s that Freeman had established the previous year.

In the end, Freeman posted an 8.79 ERA with peripherals to match. The hope is that it was merely a lost season, but somebody like Freeman doesn't have the greatest margin for error, either.

Tanner McDougal

From here, we're talking about guys whose recoveries from major injuries were charted into the new year. McDougal had Tommy John surgery at the end of the 2021 season, so he was supposed to miss just about all of 2022, although perhaps he'd be healthy enough to surface in instructs.

He appears to be on schedule for the 2023 season, although building his workload will be a yearslong project. The pandemic prevented him from logging a full season of high school ball, and he came up one out short of 10 innings before his elbow gave way in 2021.

Luke Shilling

Shilling made his 2022 debut on July 8, just about a year after undergoing Tommy John surgery in the middle of the 2021 season, and the hope is that his three months of struggles merely reflected the time required for a pitcher to regain feel for his stuff. Shilling walked 16 batters and plunked three more over 13⅓ innings.

Shilling had already overcome the Jake Peavy lat injury to start his pro career. Glass half full, he's seen worse and knows how to absorb setbacks in performance. Glass half empty, he's going to find it difficult to stay on the mound.

Jonathan Stiever

Just like McDougal and Shilling, we're talking about the same procedure that put him on this last last year. What sets Stiever apart is that his season-ending lat surgery in 2021 wasn't supposed to drastically affect his 2022 plans. He was supposed to participate in spring training, but he didn't end up surfacing in game action until September, when he threw three scoreless one-inning appearances over the course of eight days.

Stiever's prospect stock fell as quickly as it rose, mostly because his success seems predicated on whether his fastball is hitting 96 mph or 94 mph. When he's at the lower range of his power, his breaking pitches aren't nearly as dynamic.