It was spread across two organizations due to a midseason trade, he was playing in Double-A as a 20-year-old, and he got on base so much that he was still clearly rated as an above-average hitter, but Edgar Quero slugged .351 last season.
So in his view, this breakout season that's seen the young Cuban backstop earn a midseason promotion to Triple-A, where he's now both Charlotte's youngest position player and most productive hitter is a demonstration of what he can do when he's fully operational. The 2023 season where he was simply ahead of schedule by any measure -- especially for a bilingual young catcher -- is simply "not my best," and a combined line of .284/.372/.473 across Birmingham and Charlotte is "what I expected."
"I mean, I can do a little bit better," added Quero.
"He's not going to tell you that he's had a good year," said director of player development Paul Janish. "He's going to tell you about some of the things he needs to continue to work on to get better. I value that at that position. It's a selfless type of position if you're going to be really good at it."
"It's really cool to see a young guy have so much confidence in himself," said Colson Montgomery. "It's not arrogance, it's really good confidence."
Maybe, as Quero and Janish are bantering with each other in Spanish, and the stout young catcher is boasting about 60-yard run times he was able to hit earlier in his young life that clearly don't pass the smell test to anyone in the Knights dugout, he can playfully drift into arrogance. But Quero quickly shifts into business as he bangs out a series of activities to keep himself fresh while sidelined from hitting with a sore back, gives a pair of interviews, shakes a few hands of VIP visitors to the ballpark and is back to the locker room for some other task in a half hour's time.
"A position like [catcher] is grueling on your body, it's grueling on your mind," said Justin Jirschele, only a couple weeks removed from being Quero's manager. "It's obviously a position where sometimes it's all about getting pitchers through innings and get us through a game, and then also hitting [third or fourth] and being asked to produce runs each and every night. He's asked to do a lot, and the production's been there."
While Montgomery and Bryan Ramos offer the sort of tall, athletic frames that identify them as prospects right as they stride onto the field, Quero is more of the build that immediately identifies him as the catcher. Short and stout with tree trunks for legs, Quero is quick to contextualize his performance in terms of the work he put into his body. In spring, Quero felt his weight loss would make him both more agile behind the plate, and quicker at rotating his hips in the batter's box.
Now that he's one home run shy (16) of matching his professional single-season high despite being sidelined for the past two weeks, Quero has validation. Even if a narrowed leg base in his batting stance seems to have keyed Quero having timing consistent enough to lift the ball more, he physically put himself in position to make the adjustment. Whereas Quero used to have to rock his hips back to load from a wider stance, a smaller step with his front foot now allows to hinge on his back leg quicker and he's been more reliably catching balls out front this year.
"It's just allowing him to have time to make the proper move to put the ball in the air a little bit more and, and that's why he slugging a little bit more," said Knights hitting coach Cameron Seitzer. "We never really talk about too much ball flight. It's more so his timing, and making a proper decision to get a swing for line drives. Because when he's out front, or the contact points are out front a little bit farther, that's how the ball gets in the air. His line drive approach, his line drive move for the ball has not changed. The base has just allowed him to get to that point quicker."
"It's how low-effort-level it is from both the right and left side," said Montgomery, and sure enough, despite a past reputation for having a more level right-handed swing and a more uppercut lefty cut, Quero has produced power from both sides in 2024. Really he's just been awesome at everything right-handed, since he's hitting .346/.422/.603 from that side of the plate.
Quero has trained with Miguel Vargas in past offseasons and the pair remains friends. Both would covet the chance to be the next series of Cuban-born mainstays in the White Sox lineup, as they each are more versed in recent baseball history than the average Zoomer. Age, catching workload (the Sox found themselves tapering down Quero's playing time at the end 95 games caught last year) and now this multi-week back flareup all complicate that dream being realized in 2024, not that Quero is going to reveal any great concern about the topic.
"I don't think about that, I'm just trying to play baseball," Quero said.
Since they currently view him as their starting catcher of the future, the White Sox are thinking about it a bit more, and seem a bit less care-free.
"He’s a big part of our future so we’re certainly not going to push him to the point where we put him in harm's way for the sake to help our major-league club or anything like that," said general manager Chris Getz. "He’s under consideration [for a call-up], but we want to make sure he’s healthy and we’ll make a decision from there."
Usually with a 21-year-old catcher viewed as a bat-first prospect around the league, a central question is whether their receiving and game-planning has reached a level that won't cause consternation with a young and developing pitching staff. Even as he's smoothened out his receiving and blocking to assure he'll stick behind the plate long-term, his ability to control the running game is below-average. A normal development trajectory for the hardest defensive position in the sport would have him years away from the majors, but his bat keeps insisting otherwise.
In his favor, it seems the easy assuredness of Quero's quotes extends elsewhere.
"He was easy to get on the same page with," said pitching prospect Mason Adams. "He knew kind of what I wanted to do and he followed the game pretty well, saw things in hitters that maybe I can't see from on the mound. He's good."
"I love Edgar," said Triple-A pitching coach R.C. Lichtenstein, even as he describes a learning experience. "He had a good feel even before he got here of identifying what the hitters telling him and how to beat hitters. So now, as I'm just adding little bits and pieces to his knowledge, he's taking it, he's running with it. He's very appreciative of the conversations we're having."
Since White Sox fans are suffering through possibly the most anemic major league offense of the last 40 years, the ones still tuning or even reading a subscription website would probably be appreciative of the chance to watch Quero work things out in real time. His back injury seems likely to push that to 2025, but in a point such as this one for the White Sox franchise, it's stirring to hear a young player talk about its future as something of which he's proud to be a part.
"I'm excited because when you have Latin players around you, especially Cuban players, we play baseball like life," Quero said. "We just play baseball hard, we try to win everyday. We have the winning mentality and that's what I like."
