The top seven top 10 White Sox prospect lists for 2023

8:00 AM CST on March 3, 2023

Regions Field in Birmingham (Sox Machine photos)

With MLB Pipeline posting its top 30 White Sox prospect list on Thursday, all of the major top prospect lists are accounted for ... and we're barely into March. I'm not sure what we're supposed to do with the rest of the month.

The MLB.com list offers no sizable surprises, mostly because this farm system is not designed to surprise. There's a consensus top three, and then a consensus next six. After that, the discussion expands considerably.

In this case, while Jonathan Cannon took the 10th spot, Ryan Burrowes was knocking at the door at No. 11, one spot ahead of Norge Vera. It would've been fun to see Burrowes grab the last spot on the board to better represent the murkiness of the remaining field, but I left him in my "honorable mentions" list because I just want to see him stateside before putting a number on him, so I can't blame anybody else for doing the same.

There's always next year. For now, here's the big board of lists, with a handful of observations below:

#	SM	FS	BA	MLB	Law	BP	FG
1	Montgomery	Montgomery	Montgomery	Montgomery	Montgomery	Montgomery	Montgomery
2	Colás	Colás	Colás	Colás	Ramos	Colás	Ramos
3	Ramos	Ramos	Ramos	Ramos	Colás	Ramos	Colás
4	Sosa	Schultz	Schultz	Schultz	Rodríguez	Vera	Schultz
5	Rodríguez	Sosa	Burke	Burke	Sosa	Mena	Sosa
6	Mena	Rodríguez	Mena	Rodríguez	Schultz	Schultz	Rodríguez
7	Pallette	Mena	Pallette	Mena	Pallette	Pallette	Burke
8	Schultz	Pallette	Vera	Sosa	Mena	Rodríguez	Mena
9	Burke	Burke	Rodríguez	Pallette	Burke	Mieses	Santos
10	Vera	Vera	Sosa	Cannon	Cannon	Burke	Vera

*This is the rare board that has everybody accounted for with the same body of evidence. Sometimes lists are posted before a key signing or trade, or sometimes lists are posted a month into the season, which is how Bryan Ramos outranked Colson Montgomery on FanGraphs' list last year.

*Speaking of FanGraphs, its FanGraphs' Future Value-based ranking is prone to inflating the standing of one low-leverage relief type, and Gregory Santos threatens to follow in the footsteps of Codi Heuer, Zack Burdi and Caleb Freeman (although Heuer briefly looked worth the billing).

*Vera topped out at fourth on Baseball Prospectus' list, and bottomed out at 17th on Keith Law's, which looks like the biggest spread to me. The enthusiasm chasm makes sense, because he's looked like three different guys over the course of his very brief career.

*Sean Burke has a smaller divide, but the difference between fifth and 10th on this list strikes me as as the difference between believing he can contribute at a Davis Martin-like level, or that he's a year away from it.

*Baseball Prospectus also out on a limb with Luis Mieses, although as I mentioned during Prospect Week, I like Mieses for his appreciable progress over the last two years, which gives hope that he can close up at least one of the gaps in his game that's holding him back.

*I'm the lowest on Noah Schultz, although not because of Schultz himself. I mostly want the White Sox to prove that they can smoothly start a prep pitcher's professional career before I put him ahead of pitchers who have demonstrated success at higher levels. The Schultz-adjacent skepticism also made me the high man on Lenyn Sosa, which I'm fine with.