Ostensibly, the White Sox hosted a Zoom session with director of player development Paul Janish because the Double-A Birmingham Barons are trying to win the Southern League again.
Given how many half-serious references Sox officials have made in recent weeks that Tanner McDougal/Braden Montgomery/Sam Antonacci have a championship to worry about whenever they've been asked a question about their futures, the Barons' success is a point of pride.
But, within limits.
"We want every team in the organization to be that way," Janish said of the Barons' success. "That’s tough to influence all the time, but I do think being intentional with trying to have that as part of our development system, paying attention to the scoreboard. Because at the end of the day, when you get to where you want to go, that’s the only thing that matters. You’ve got to be careful on the development side making that too important or getting your calculus out of whack, but I do think if you look at organizations that have had success with development -- and I pay attention to it because it’s kind of in the job description -- most of those teams, most of those organizations have teams in their organization that are having success. They’re winning the championship, going to the playoffs."
As Jim has pointed out, at least in conversations where I was trying to think of stuff to ask about, that the lack of offense in Birmingham and the Southern League at large is getting extreme to the point of becoming an anti-Charlotte. McDougal's stuff has looked exquisite this season, but if anything he's struggled to distinguish himself, or looked a beat worse at Birmingham-flavored run prevention than counterparts with more marginal stuff who attack the zone with gusto (Shane Murphy, Jake Palisch, Tyler Schweitzer) in a league where the average slugging percentage is .340.
On the other side of that coin is a Barons offense that slugs just .331 in its own right, producing a style of baseball that looks more adapted to its environment than projectable to the upper levels. While Antonacci and Montgomery will eventually be counterexamples, Jacob Gonzalez is the only prominent Baron hitter to get promoted in 2025, and has slugged .298 with Charlotte since. Janish offered that Regions Field is pitcher-friendly, the Southern League getting renowned as a soft landing for top pitching talent becomes self-fulfilling after a while, and the sweltering heat of summer is punishing on position players possibly still adjusting to a full-season schedule.
But he also offered that, even with the additional context of the Sox evaluating more off of batted-ball data than surface results, that hitters are going to hit.
"Tim Elko, Brooks Baldwin, some of these guys that have been in that league, they had good offensive numbers," Janish said. "Maybe the power numbers relative to their ability is down, but they do still have relative offensive success. So I feel like while offensively the league is down maybe as a whole in terms of numbers, I still think there's some context you can point to. If you're talking about guys who are going to the big leagues eventually, they're still finding a way to have some offensive success in that league."
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That's a good segue to Antonacci, who is hitting .292/.435/.381 with 21 stolen bases in 49 games at Birmingham. He is a classic scouts-versus-statistical-models divisive prospect. The 22-year-old has rolled out of bed and piled up a ton of contact and run an OBP north of .400 at seemingly every level of competition, but he will never be projected for impact because of his lack of power and defensive value. He's not going to be getting much more than spot duty at shortstop going forward, and even if he adds strength, it's a blatantly contact-oriented swing and approach.
But if there are four players that Janish thinks haven't gotten enough publicity for their performances, it's Antonacci, Caleb Bonemer, Jeral Perez and maybe journeyman reliever Tyler Davis. If there's just one, maybe Antonacci.
"If we were having this call 12 months ago, right, we would all just have said, 'Interesting player, he plays hard, et cetera,' but he's put himself on the map," Janish said. "Sam's probably our best example of kind of playing really well and arguably doing maybe more than we thought they were going to. That's a really good indicator, very indicative of our process of our organization being in a pretty good spot because you got guys that are maybe –– we can't promise you they're all gonna get to the big leagues, but we do want to make them as good as they can be, and Sam's a really easy example to point to right now."
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Noah Schultz is done for the season as the White Sox look to rest his right patellar tendinitis, and it's important they do, since the current plan is that he will avoid surgery for the issue. More than the 9.37 ERA at Triple-A Charlotte, that locks Schultz in at 73 innings for the year--a 15-inning decrease from 2024, in a season that was supposed to, and still likely will be the left-hander's last chance to increase his innings base before his major league career begins.
In saying they expect Schultz's results to be good enough for Chicago, after a year where his control was undermined by knee soreness, they also are expecting him to continue to add bulk and strength to his sinewy 6'10" frame over the offseason. The fan base probably remembers Garrett Crochet's innings management (a bummer) differently than the front office (a success, because he stayed healthy enough to return a haul), but Monday probably won't be the last time that particular dance is going to be referenced with Schultz's 2026 season.
"From an innings standpoint, as opposed to putting parameters on what it might be, we’ll look at it as an opportunistic opportunity to try to push him as much as his body shows he will allow," Janish said. "Similar to what we dealt with with Garrett at the major league level last year. Based on some sports science testing we do, we can play it by ear. We can see where he’s at coming into spring training from a physical standpoint and we can track his outings."
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If Schultz is ever at the White Sox academy in the Dominican Republic, he's either a very interesting person or things have gotten very weird (or both?), but after breaking ground on the new facility last month, Janish remains optimistic that it will be open by next fall.
"In a perfect world we were hoping to have our Dominican instructional league at the new facility. That's maybe optimistic, but that's where we're hoping," Janish said. "Obviously construction timelines can be fluid, so we'll see how that goes."
A new facility can do a lot, whether it's internal expectations that the White Sox will be able to field two DSL teams when it's completed, to David Keller crediting it as a recruiting tool in international scouting with some recent rumors of results to match. But something that came through in visiting Arizona, which houses plenty of player development staff involved in aiding international players in their transition to both the US and professional baseball, is that it adds some heft to their efforts to convince their charges that the White Sox organization is investing in their success.
That's always a needed message, but certainly now when entering an offseason that will bring more noticeable change to White Sox international operations.
