Colson Montgomery is a 22-year-old just starting his second month in Triple-A, after roughly a half-season of at-bats at the prior level. He's still walking as much as you remember (13.5 percent after two free passes Sunday) and after two homers in the last four days, is a lot closer to a league-average hitter at the level (101 wRC+) than word of his slow start might indicate -- .225/.348/.405 in 133 plate appearances.
"I feel like I'm playing all right," Montgomery said in a recent phone call. "I know I'm not at the top of my game at anything. I feel like defensively I'm not reaching the ceiling but I'm constantly improving going in day in, day out and showing that I'm a true shortstop."
"Dissatisfied but far from worried" might be a good summary, but even that might undersell Montgomery's underlying satisfaction with a crucial element.
"As comfortable as I have been at shortstop," Montgomery proclaims.
While proving it to all the doubters that he can stick at shortstop has been a galvanizing force for Montgomery since he was privy to how teams viewed him going into the draft, his confidence has grown alongside a pregame fielding routine that has grown more complex at every minor league level.
Now his manager Justin Jirschele is also the organization's assistant infield coordinator, and Charlotte's bench coach -- a role the Knights coaching lacked last year -- is former Brewers shortstop Pat Listach. The pair are tasked with putting Montgomery through a battery of ground-ball reps pregame that everyone involved wants to be as close to game speed as possible.
"He gets out the Little Red Machine every afternoon before we stretch," said Jirschele, referring to the pitching machine that has become en vogue for fielders to test their reactions at high velocity. "He'll start flat-footed where he's just working his hands, seeing ball impact glove out in front of his eyes, keeping his eyes behind it. Then he moves into some slight footwork with it. The ball is shooting out and he's working his feet to not get caught on an in-between hop. After getting his body moving a little bit, seeing ball on the ground, seeing ball in the glove, and then he'll take that out to the field."
Once he's out on the field, Montgomery clarifies that while he's perfectly comfortable setting his feet and firing, his game plan is to be on the attack as much as possible. Jirschele refers to it as wanting Montgomery moving "downhill" rather than flat-footed as the baseball comes to him.
"It's more of a mindset, just to keep me more locked into the game," Montgomery said. "That's just more of me just playing and having fun with it and doing what's most comfortable for me. That's just being athlete. A lot of the time I don't even know that I'm doing that -- throwing on the run -- but it kind of just happens. It's what I'm more comfortable with."
While proving to everyone he's a shortstop is more of a long-term project, Montgomery spent the most recent offseason with his agency diving into his nutrition, hydration and movement patterns trying to drive out inefficiencies. Looking back, he doesn't see anything he really could have done to prevent the oblique and back strain he dealt with last season, but he wanted to feel at his best more often.
"I just want to prove that I can play every single day," Montgomery said. "You see a lot of guys now, some dudes take days off. But if I can go out and play every single day, that's what I want to do. I'm competitive as heck. I want to play at the top of the level of everything. You get better as you play, so the more I play, I know that I will get better."
"It's quality over quantity," Jirschele said of trying to manage Montgomery's pregame workload. "It's easy at this time of year to get yourself into quantity. A guy like him who's going to play everyday and wants to play everyday is starting to prove that he can bring it everyday."
The proceeds of that approach is what Montgomery hopes and believes he's starting to see amid a slow offensive start at the Triple-A level. For someone who sees pitches as comfortably as he does, Montgomery thinks the strike zone becoming strictly formalized should play to his favor in the long-term. But in trying to account for how and why he's struck out at an abnormally high 30.8 percent with the related low batting average in the opening month, he can recall a few learning moments that have cost him an at-bat.
"It kind of helps me a little bit," Montgomery began. "But with the whole challenge rule, if they call it a ball and clips the zone, it kind of hurts you a little bit. Because I was for sure that was a ball, but a seam touched the zone so they call it a strike. There's some pros and cons about it, but I would say with me being able to see the zone really well, it's kind of helped me. But then there's some situations where it's kind of backfired on me."
Just as pitchers with good command tend to get the benefit of the doubt on borderline calls, it's easy to imagine Montgomery's strike zone judgment earning similar credibility with human umpires. But the maturity gap between his plate approach and the attack plans of opposing pitchers thinned in his first month at Triple-A, and he's been taking notice of the new parameters.
"In the lower levels, walks and things like that, they'd be given to you a little bit, and here you have to earn your walks because they're not going to give anything to you," Montgomery said. "A lot of guys are a lot more polished. If you hold off on some of their breaking-ball stuff in the dirt, chase pitches, if you don't swing at it, they're still comfortable to throw it for a strike. In a lot of lower levels, if you don't swing at some of their chase stuff, they'll just give you a fastball. They'll just give you a cookie. But here they don't really do that. The margin for error is really small. A lot of guys don't make many mistakes so I feel like you've got to capitalize on when they do throw you a cookie down the middle, or wherever is your honeyhole."
Montgomery tries to stay pretty openminded about where that honeyhole is located. His specific focus on "seeing the ball deep" comes into play more for his two-strike approach than anything else, when he wants the longest window possible to recognize spin. But the 22-year-old also likes to focus on backspinning baseballs to the left-center gap, not caring for the hooking tendencies that emerge from consciously trying to pull the ball, or what happens when he tries to "swing out my butt."
"A guy at 22 years old in Triple-A for the first time and doesn't start the way offensively that he would like to start, it would be very, very easy -- and you see it all the time -- for a guy to run his chase numbers up and the plate discipline goes out the window because he's trying to force it," Jirschele said. "He's still stringing out long at-bats, he's having great at-bats righties and lefties. To me that's what stands out. It would be easy for him to get out of character to force the issue to get himself back to where he wants to be. The plate discipline has played true, and that just shows the maturity in his game and his mind. And again, doing it every single day and wanting to be in there every single day."
Ideally for Montgomery, his power will emerge from when his recognition skills lead him to catching balls out in front, like when he identified and sprang out on the changeup shown above on Thursday night for his fourth home run of the season. It's not a pure power-focused approach, but Montgomery doesn't view himself as a player with limited set of specialties, whether it's within his offensive approach or just his overall game. And the White Sox are not inclined to limit him.
"He's off to a little bit of a slow start but obviously we're very excited about him," said director of player development Paul Janish. "Particularly the long-term prospect of having what you could potentially call a homegrown superstar."
