Last year's first-round pick Jacob Gonzalez had a poor White Sox organizational debut at Low-A Kannapolis in 2023. His struggles to cover the outer half of the strike zone in pro ball served as the impetus for changes in his posture and setup at the plate.
He not only responded well enough to the changes to earn an assignment to High-A Winston-Salem based off his spring training, but Gonzalez also had more walks than strikeouts at that level when he was promoted to Double-A Birmingham before Memorial Day. With that, the potential for a very new brand of happy story, one where the White Sox improved a struggling prospect's trajectory with both a conditioning plan to add strength and biomechanics-informed swing adjustments, seemed to be in place.
If you're a Sox Machine subscriber reading an article in mid-September, you're unsurprised that something much more complicated wound up happening instead.
"I've been uncomfortable this whole year," Gonzalez said of his revamped swing. "For being uncomfortable the whole year, I've done pretty good in my eyes. Obviously my numbers aren't the best, but for not doing the best, it's not the worst."
Gonzalez has hit .225/.284/.321 in 94 games at Double-A Birmingham. He is still 22 until next May, and if the player he is at the end of the year is more important than his minor league statistical line, then it's encouraging that a humble 10-game hitting streak he opened up in the middle of August started a small trend of hitting for more power. But for someone drafted more as a proven SEC performer with a polished plate approach than a raw high-ceiling type with elite athleticism to wait on, the whole season registers as a continuation of a disconcertingly slow start to Gonzalez's professional career.
The lefty swinger hit .257/.333/.471 over his last 19 games with the Barons, a stretch that has now been interrupted by back tightness at the end of 130 games played. Gonzalez is considered day-to-day, but has missed the past week and is uncertain to play in Birmingham's upcoming playoff series.
But the influx of more extra-base hits is something for which Gonzalez does credit his swing changes. And after hitting 40 homers in 186 career games at Ole Miss, his lack of thump against professional pitching had already prompted a midseason change in Gonzalez's training regimen.
"I was hitting too many balls to the warning track," Gonzalez said. "A little after the All-Star break we decided that instead of maintaining strength, to trying to get stronger during the year, and I think that's been really helpful. I find myself being more sore from the lifts, but it kind of makes me feel more loose, too."
Gonzalez's swing discomfort stems from the fact that the effort to keep him from pulling off the baseball to the first-base side has reset his mechanism for staying back on offspeed pitches. His strikeout and walk rates will mirror each other in the low teens when the Los Angeles-area native is rolling right, so fittingly, Gonzalez openly bemoaned a stretch earlier this season where he had 20 strikeouts without drawing a walk.
At just 14 percent, Gonzalez's strikeout rate is the lowest among Southern League hitters with over 400 plate appearances by a lot, but he still regards it as below his standards. Even if his two-strike approach is still good enough to keep him alive, Gonzalez can recall too many hittable early count offerings that went by the boards.
"When I was going with my direction toward first base, my weight was back," Gonzalez said. "That made me able to stay back longer. In this new way, I don't have my weight back, so it sometimes feels hard to stay back sometimes. But my direction is always good."
Even though struggles at Low-A Kannapolis with his original setup are what prompted this change, this is probably the point of the story where a reader might openly wonder if Gonzalez should just return to his old college stance and swing.
The baseball season is far too long for him to not have already entertained that thought himself.
"I tried going back to my old setup once I felt like I didn't need to think about my direction," Gonzalez said. "So I went back to [having] my weight back, but then my direction was not as good. It was like for three games I went back to my old way of hitting, and I didn't like how it was. So for the most part, it's all been the same the whole year."
Gonzalez is not a bat-only player by any stretch, and the White Sox have levied praise upon him for posting everyday at an up-the-middle position up to this point. His defense has earned compliments from people in Birmingham, and since he's played all over the diamond earlier in life, Gonzalez said he had no issues with being asked to move over to second base earlier in the year to accommodate Brooks Baldwin at short.
That and a solid concept of the strike zone provide a high-enough floor for Gonzalez being a major league contributor if he can find a way to drive the ball consistently the way he did at Ole Miss, albeit with mechanics that will look quite different.
He certainly hasn't stopped searching.
"I tried standing upright and having a little leg kick and it's going OK so far, so maybe that can be the thing going forward." Gonzalez said of a recent session. "My struggle for the year was I could be ready for the fastball, but it could be tough for me to stay back for a breaking ball because I was used to having my weight back and just going, as opposed to loading and then going. So with the leg kick, it helps me get my weight to my backside easier and just reacting from there."
It sounds like it won't be until next spring that a real view to whether a leg kick will be the loading action that make it click for Gonzalez, but the initial review from hitting coach Nicky Delmonico was promising.
"He was like, 'I think that's probably the best you've looked,' so all right, let's try it."
